


The Forest for the Trees

by gilead



Category: DCU, Harley Quinn (Comics), Poison Ivy (Comics)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Smut, plant mom writes a fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:14:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24343348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilead/pseuds/gilead
Summary: For a decade, Pamela has been living in solitude on family estate, nurturing what has become an internationally renown private garden.Harley buys up an insignificantly small and run-down bordering property, halting Pamela's slow but sure assimilation of surrounding acreage. And for what it seems to Pamela, no good reason.An AU about love after trauma.
Relationships: Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 42
Kudos: 362





	1. Chapter 1

It’s spring, and Pamela is buried.

Buried under twenty acres of garden with a handful of staff she can’t trust for most tasks. A gargantuan undertaking. Not only that, but one of them fails to show up, and she’s forced to tend the flower beds out front by the road, in full view of any and all riffraff that happen to pass by.

She almost regrets dismantling the stone wall that had encircled the estate. All that’s left it of it is a low retaining wall encircling the vegetable garden directly behind her residence. But it had been cold and oppressive, and nearabout offensive after she’d fled Gotham looking for sun, for water, for growth.

Pausing for a drink of water, Pamela looks down the gentle slope beginning from her driveway. She would have an interrupted view of the lake, if not for that decrepit, atrocity of a house on a thousand square feet of land if that. It’s leaning up against forested land she’s already begun to buy up, doggedly existing.

"How d'ya get your rhododendrons ta look like that? Mine’s all weird ‘n brown,” a voice floats over, dislodging Pamela from her thoughts.

Pamela wants to ignore the voice. But rhododendrons. She sighs and stands up resolutely, turning around with her trowel in hand.

Opposite the fence stands a blonde woman, older than Pamela would have guessed from her voice. On the puzzling side of it, she’s walking by with a to-go cup complete with a bendy straw and a pair of daisy dukes, as if she’s stepped out of a coffee shop in the city, and is not in fact an hour drive away from the closest town.

Pamela doesn’t ask about it. She has but one concern.

“Are they dry and crispy? Mottled? Brown on the edges or tips?”

The stranger takes a loud, casual slurp from her straw. “They’re just brown, ya know?”

Pamela pulls her sun hat closer around her face and sighs. The simplest, most common explanation will have to suffice.

“It’s spring. Most likely, your rhododendron needs more water than usual. And you need to make sure it’s getting soaked down to the roots at least twice a month, not just getting a light sprinkling.”

“Oh. Thanks, flower lady.” The blonde hikes up her shorts and starts back down the road. As Pamela watches, the shorts fall back down her hips again, uncovering a tattoo low on her back.

Paula looks back down to her posies, now worried about someone else’s rhododendrons and regretting dispensing expert botanical advice to a type that would probably pour leftover coffee into the kitchen pothos.

Forget the posies. She’ll have to look for weeds requiring aggressive extraction.

\--

“How’re we doing on Primrose Cottage?”

Pamela leans a hip against her kitchen counter, looking out into the yard with her phone pressed against her ear. Her mint’s looking unruly again, as it does by the end of every week.

“Someone beat you to it in January. But not an investor. It’s listed as owner-occupied,” her real estate agent tells her with some disbelief. “They’ve made updates to its livability, surely?”

“It looks the exact same as it did when I moved in.”

“Maybe a complete renovation of the interior?”

“The house is lopsided,” Pamela relays stonily.

“Maybe you should’ve spent less time on the back of your property and more time facing the front,” Zatanna deadpans, inured to Pamela’s general misanthropy and abiding grouchiness after having worked with her for the better part of a decade.

“We both thought it was abandoned, and you, in fact, told me not to worry about it until I was ready to buy.”

“I’m _not_ worried about it. It throws a wrench into your timeline, but nobody in their right mind is going to hang onto a thousand square feet of land in the middle of bumfuck nowhere—excuse me—with you for a neighbour—excuse me again.”

Pamela compresses her response to Zatanna’s analysis into a grunt. “Then by all means, work your magic.”

“There’s plenty of magic to go around, just not the coercive type. And I don’t think you’d agree to those methods.”

“You mailed them the all-cash, as-is offer?”

“Five percent over market price,” the realtor confirms. “With your go ahead, we can keep upping it.”

“Hold off for now. I’ll go see who’s home.”

“You’re talking to them?” Zatanna sounds shocked. “When? Can I be there?”

“Presently, so I’ll advise you if further mailings will be necessary.”

“Damn, you’re pissed. Maybe don’t get chased off with a shotgun. You know the backwoods types. But tell me if you do. Just tell me everything. Ta.”

It’s not a long walk out to Primrose Cottage. It’s long enough that Pamela gets to enjoy her garden, relax, then be exasperated all over again.

Parked on the side of the road out front is a lifted, gas-guzzling, zombie-apocalypse type truck. As expected, it’s outfitted with an oversized grille guard, floodlights mounted above the windshield, and a thick coat of dirt.

Pamela scowls.

She has an off-road vehicle of her own out of necessity. Electric, of course, and sleek, well-maintained. This homeowner’s choice of vehicle? Not promising.

The path up is utterly overgrown with brown, scratchy bushes. When Pamela finally emerges from the gauntlet, she stops when she’s confronted with the eyesore. It’s the closest she’s ever been to it.

The house looks like it should be condemned. Its siding, which may have been white at some point in its life, is peeling, and in some places, missing in strips. One side of its foundation has partially collapsed, lending the entire structure a slight, but disturbing slant. An abandoned tire sits on its side on the front lawn. Next to it is a doorless washer.

Pamela takes a deep, bracing breath. She dodges the broken step on her way up to the porch and knocks.

A thump sounds from deep inside. A woman curses amid more clattering. Hurried footsteps approach the door, which squeals open.

Looking back at Pamela is a pale face, hair a wild mane of bleached blonde with straggling dye at the ends, bright blue eyes and a dazzling smile.

"Flower lady!"

"My name is Pamela.”

"An’ mine’s Harley. How d'ya make out?”

Pamela squints, confused. Harley squints back, also confused.

"Wait, Pamela?”

Harley holds up a finger then proceeds to dive into a rather disorderly pile of mail on the sideboard near the door, torn envelopes fluttering to the ground around her. She emerges with a crumpled packet of documents, shoving it into Pamela’s face.

“Pamela Isley? This Pamela? Wants ta buy my house Pammie?”

“Yes, I sent those,” Pamela says, pushing the papers aside. “It’s a very generous offer. More than market price. You could buy a superior property anywhere else and save yourself the upkeep of this one.”

“That’s nice ‘n all,” Harley frowns, “but I just got here.”

“Then moving back out won’t be a problem for you. I have plans for this property, and as you can see, it’s somewhat of an eyesore.” Pamela eyes Harley guardedly, her stare blanker than she’d like. “I should add that I own all of the land around you. It could be unpleasant if you decide to stay.”

"Look—lady—" Harley's mouth twists a few ways around any number of invectives before she spits, "I'm slower than I used ta be, 'cause I took too many knocks or whatever." She pokes her temple a little too hard, bouncing her own skull. "But it doesn't mean I don't understand what's goin' on."

"And what is it that you think is going on?”

"You want what's mine fer some stupid rich person reason, and ya ain't gettin' it."

Dead silence. Pamela feels a migraine coming on.

"My reasons are a tad more nuanced than that, but it seems that you've come up with your own interpretation.”

"Don't ya dare mock me.” Harley’s eyes go a touch unfocused. She jabs the air between them, a snarl overtaking her face, just as animated as her grin had been.

"I'm not. You understand the situation perfectly. You just don't understand _me_.”

“How ‘bout you understand somethin’?” Harley’s finger comes closer and jabs Pamela’s shoulder. It’s horrifying. “I wanna be left alone. In peace. By myself. So why don’tcha beat it?”

It’s an unsettlingly familiar request, but Pamela doesn’t have much room to manoeuvre as Harley’s front door slams in her face. It bounces on the jam and doesn’t appear to have a functional lock, but the message is clear enough.

\--

Where Pamela has the patience of tree growing into concrete, Harley has the doggedness of a rabid pitbull.

She sends more letters, offers Harley more money. Any reasonable person would accept. The problem is, Harley isn’t one.

Pamela plans—pines, even—over her garden expansion, one in harmony with the lake ecosystem. She imagines how alive it would look, her prudently selected aquatic plants boosting the health of the lake itself and the living creatures in it.

In the meantime, Pamela closes on the properties bordering Harley's on three sides. One side is forest, and she fences the rest with hawthorn hedging as barbed as they are tall, locking Harley into a small patch of claustrophobic shadow. All Harley gets is the unpaved, potholed road leading out of the property and the lake beyond that.

The lake Pamela should have sole access to.

She's trimming the hawthorn from atop a ladder one afternoon, weeks later, and just happens to see over the top.

Someone, at some point, had occupied this house and cared for its postage stamp garden. Weathered and dead as it is now, the camellias and rhododendrons are decades old, and Pamela’s heart cracks at the grandeur forfeited to neglect and ignorance.

Harley's rhododendrons look dreadful. Now that Pamela can see them, she knows the brown is from damage caused by spider mites. Telltale gauzy webs stretch from stem to stem, announcing the presence of prolific pest that could spread on the wind to the hedge, to her own garden. Unacceptable.

Pamela shifts her attention to a clothesline stretched diagonally across the yard, weighed down with a sweater, a pair of overalls, and a thong fluttering in the breeze next to a pair of thigh highs. Pamela looks sharply away from the thong to the owner of said thong, spread-eagled unmoving on the uneven paving.

Her eyes rove over Harley’s paint-splattered smock. It’s not only confined to her clothing. The paint’s on Harley’s arms, her feet, her neck, and her cheek—a grotesque red slash from the edge of her mouth to her ear, like a psychotic grin dug out with a knife.

Harley notices Pamela and waves, slightly manic, as if they meet over the hedge every afternoon.

“Those are nicer than anythin’ that grew back home,” Harley comments luminously. “Ya got a gift. An’ now I can lay out without worryin’ ‘bout burnin’!”

Pamela can’t tell if Harley is being cavalier or truly ignorant to what’s happening around her. There’s a devil-may-care to her that has Pamela on edge.

“You have spider mites,” Pamela tells her. “A heavy infestation.”

“Just spideys,” Harley shrugs.

“Not _just._ We’re in season. Females can produce three hundred eggs in a matter of weeks.”

“I’m kinda busy.” Harley closes her eyes again. “Ain’t there privacy laws?”

Furious and ashamed, Pamela climbs back down the ladder and doesn’t look over the hedge again.

\--

The thought of spider mites invading her orchids, a new breed that Pamela’s hybridized herself, is an unbearable nightmare.

Within a day of deliberation, Pamela takes a bottle of neem oil from her storehouse. On the path to Harley’s, she hears splashing beyond the brambles. Pamela pushes through.

It’s Harley, pulling a ridiculous bright pink flamingo floatie deeper into the lake.

“You’re trespassing,” Pamela calls out. “That’s my lake.”

“Ya can’t own a lake,” Harley scoffs.

“Yes, I can. It’s non-navigable waters. I own the land around it and under it.”

“Except mine, so I fuck you if I can’t swim right in front of my own house.” Harley accents her words with two middle fingers raised skyward.

Pamela sighs. She could call the local sheriff, but then she’d have to deal with more people, waste more time, and neglect her garden more than she’d allotted for today.

She holds up the neem oil. “Will you at least come here and take this?”

“I ain’t interested unless that’s an ice-cold beer,” Harley says airily, launching herself onto the floatie.

Pamela looks easily past the mismatched pink and blue bikini, to a body lithe with wiry muscle, and paler than porcelain.

It’s been a hot minute for Pamela. It’s only natural, and human—

But there’s a shimmer to Harley’s skin, almost all over, which upon closer observation are a collection of silvery scars, varying from deep pink to satiny white.

Harley shades her eyes. “Whatsit, anyway?”

Pamela clears her throat feebly. “Neem oil. For your mite infestation. But you have to be careful not to burn the foliage by mistiming or misapplication.”

“That sounds kinda full on. Can’t ya do it?”

“Do you know how much I’m paid for botanical consultation?”

“No skin off my back if I can’t afford ya,” Harley shrugs. She kicks herself closer to the centre of the lake, but not before yelling one last challenge.

“Are ya comin’ to fix my spideys or not?”

\--

Pamela’s back again the next day, kit in hand. Harley’s front door has been propped open with a bat. She knocks anyway.

“It’s open!”

Blowing straight through the house to the garden, Pamela takes stock and immediately begins pruning. She builds a considerable pile of yard waste before she’s ready for the next step. It takes her some unnecessary effort to search for and untangle the garden hose so she can hook up her bug blasting attachment, finishing the foliage cleanse with a deep watering.

Happy with the marked improvement, she keeps the neem oil and her organic insecticide in her arsenal. But she’s less able to maintain her matter-of-factness as she re-enters the house, raising her voice hesitantly.

“Harley?”

“What?”

She follows the yell to the den. “I just wanted to say—” Pamela, alarmed by her surroundings, finishes her sentence purely due to having planned it. “I’m finished out there, for now.”

It’s a lawless workroom, easels and canvases leaning askew. Tubes and bottles of paint alike are scattered across the floor, but worse, the actual substance itself is everywhere, splattered and dripped and sprayed.

The chaos is an extension of Harley’s actual art: formless swirls and blobs of colour, harmonious but somehow not in any methodical way, at times coalescing to suggest familiar shapes but with no incisiveness. Pamela has a sense of desperation looking at one, sneering contempt in another.

Then there’s Harley, sunburnt, at the centre of it all.

“What d’ya think?”

“It’s special,” Pamela offers, unusually tongue-tied.

“Of course it’s special,” Harley sneers, batting Pamela aside to pick up a rocks glass on the windowsill.

Shoring up her underused social skills, Pamela tries again. “Have you always been an artist?”

“Nah,” says Harley, “but I guess I do okay. I take photos of this stuff and people ask me to ship ‘em places.” Harley points at a sloppily taped box in the corner, sitting in a puddle of packing peanuts and bubble wrap scraps. “That one’s goin’ ta Metropolis tomorrow.”

“Where in Metropolis?”

“I’unno, some gallery or museum or somethin’. Forgot the name. They give me these stickers now ‘cuz they went to the wrong place a coupla times.” Harley shrugs. “Anyway, I ain’t broke so I won’t be complainin’.”

“Sounds like you’re onto something.”

“And now that you know that,” Harley mentions sheepishly, “I should pay ya. Fair work for fair pay. How much are ya?”

Pamela recalls that it hasn’t been entirely honest, unselfish work. “No, I—never mind that.” She tries to change the subject. “You should add some oatmeal to a bath for that sunburn. Or baking soda, but don’t soak too long. And possibly sunblock next time.”

Harley looks intrigued. “Aren’t ya a doll?”

“May I come back to check on the rhododendrons in a few days?” Pamela asks stiffly, already backpedaling out the door.

“Yeah, if you wanna.”

“I left a pile of yard waste but I can collect that next time.”

“Uh huh,” Harley says, looking increasingly delighted as Pamela lets herself out.

\--

The next time, Pamela's prepared for anything might come out of Harley’s mouth.

“Hey Red.”

But as situations involving Harley are apt to, it spirals out of her control again.

"Ya look all cute gardenin' in yer little pants an' little shirt," Harley beams, looking Pamela up and down unabashedly.

Pamela flusters at the shamelessness of it. Harley’s standing behind her in the yard, having seen fit to come spectate the tail end of her labours.

She finds a judicious response. “It can take multiple treatments and a careful eye until garden pests are eliminated.”

“My rhodies look great. Sorry I got all tingly ‘bout ya helpin’ me for free n’ all.” Harley shifts awkwardly. “Ya want a hot dog?”

"I'm vegan."

"So no cheese? No eggs? Whaddya even eat? Salad?"

"I'll have you know a vegan diet is far more diverse than salad."

"Prove it,” Harley demands.

“Didn’t you just offer me lunch?”

“Yeah, but all I got fer vegetables is ketchup. And bread, do ya eat bread?”

Pamela has no choice but to rise to the challenge and correct Harley’s glaring ignorance.

“I’m going to make you something, and you’ll understand.”

Harley holds an open palm up to her kitchen. “I don’t got a lot in there.”

“I’ll provide ingredients.” Pamela pokes around Harley’s cabinets, some of which are missing doors, predicting what she’ll need to bring over. It’s not her own luxuriously outfitted kitchen, but it’s serviceable.

Most of the dishes seem to be piled in the sink, and Harley shoves them into the dishwasher in no apparent order. “My bad,” Harley apologizes, “it’s shlumpy in here.” To her credit, their surroundings aren’t dirty—merely cluttered.

“It’s fine. I’ll be back shortly.”

“Yeah,” Harley acknowledges, watching Pamela curiously.

The trek to and from the estate is plenty for Pamela to review her choices. She determines that she has two options: antagonize Harley until she capitulates, or execute the right combination of actions so that she sells willingly and from the kindness of her heart. The first has not only been unsuccessful, but unpleasant. But it leaves her with an incomprehensibly complex alternative.

Still, Pamela commits. Hiding in her house and never returning would not benefit the second option. So she decides on a recipe, gathers her herself and her groceries, and walks back.

Pamela finds Harley in the grips of a violent, garish video game. On a murderous rampage, her intrepid superhero dispatches villains in increasingly ludicrous ways. There are mallets and machine guns involved, as far as Pamela can tell, and for some reason, hyenas.

“You can be my sidekick,” Harley offers, adding, “there’re zombies!”

“Maybe after lunch,” Pamela says, by which she means _never_.

She brings her armload to the kitchen and reappears similarly burdened with bowls.

“I assume you eat out here.” Pamela looks back to the kitchen table piled high with both kitchen and non-kitchen related miscellany.

“Yep. Sit.” Harley pats the spot next to her on the bite-marked couch. She clears loose pencil crayons and empty bottles to make room on the coffee table. “Whatcha make?”

“Cherry tomato gazpacho with a side of potato curry.”

Harley stirs the soup attentively then devours a piece of potato. “Ooh. Hot.” She fans her mouth, then pumps her fists in front of her. “Oh, it’s good.”

“There’s more.”

Harley eats like she hasn’t had a good meal for aeons, which Pamela is afraid to think might be true.

After, Harley leans back, burps, and smacks Pamela’s arm lightly with a controller. “Ya said ya would.”

Video games with Harley is a loud and rowdy event. Pamela dies a lot. Harley revives her every time. She curses out their enemies as creatively and consistently as she praises Pamela for her every victory.

When Pamela finally thinks to check the time, she nearly topples off the couch.

“I have to go. There’s much I need to do today.”

Harley pauses the game. “Like what?”

“The hardscaping. I have extensive repairs to do to fences, raised beds, trellises, benches, and sheds. And it all has to be done before I can plant.”

“I guess.” Harley puts down her controller sulkily. “Thanks for feedin’ me an’ all that.”

“Thank you for having an open mind. And thank you for allowing me to correct the appalling first impression I must have made.”

"It’s okay, ya got a little spicy. I kinda liked it.”

“I’m,” Pamela falters, “glad.”

Harley walks her to the door and there is no mistaking her flirtatious tone. “Come back anytime, ya hear?”

\--

"Back on yer plant jesus shit?”

“I suppose so,” says Pamela, spraying diluted neem oil onto a few stubborn bottom leaves.

Harley holds a glass of ice water in Pamela’s eyeline until she takes it. A forced break, it seems.

"Look what I found in town at the pawn shop.” Harley holds up the expensive, chrome waffle maker she’s brought out with glee.

Pamela nods her approval. "Very nice. You know you can buy anything online and have it shipped into town.”

"Yeah, but then I know it exists an' I gotta wait forever fer it. Not my jam.”

“That sort of angst can happen with kitchen gadgets,” Pamela sympathizes.

“I used ta have one of those lil’ soda makers.” Harley’s face darkens slightly. “My ex broke it.”

“Well, your teeth thank you.”

“Yeah, but my brain is meltin’.” Harley puts down the waffle maker and presses her own cold glass against her neck. "Y'wanna swim later? I found a moon snail the size of my head!"

"Naticidae do not get that big."

"Yeah they do. I'll show ya."

It’s a scientific venture. And it is warmer out than seasonal for late spring. Plus, her chores for the day are done. There must be a reason Pamela ends up lakeside with Harley, and not because she’s lounging on her flamingo floatie with a popsicle and a new bikini on.

It has stars on strategic places.

“Sorry! Last popsicle,” Harley hollers, spinning the floatie to face Pamela.

“No bother. I prefer to limit my sugar intake.”

Harley’s head pops back as if she’s suffered a grievous insult. “Ya weirdo.” She swans off the floatie and backstrokes to shore with her popsicle held aloft.

If Harley knows she’s attractive, she knows how to weaponize it too, rising from the lake and tossing her head back to slick wet hair away. She then shakes off her snack and bites off the tip.

She’s eyeing Pamela carefully, unusually serious, but as soon as she registers that they’re making eye contact, breaks out into a grin.

“Ya like my tats?”

“They’re interesting,” Pamela ventures, not having been paying them any notice despite her ogling.

“I had ta cross out Puddin’s name an’ my tattoo gun broke aftah that. Probably fer the best.”

“I see.”

Having put it off long enough, Pamela shrugs out of her cover-up to reveal a strapless one-piece, black with asymmetric cut-outs. She wades into the shallows, ignoring Harley’s appraisal.

"Bitchin',” says Harley, complimentary but impertinent.

“You mentioned a prodigious moon snail.”

“Oh, right.” Harley splashes towards a clump of pickerelweed. She searches fruitlessly along the lake bottom for minutes, sagging perceptibly.

"Fuck nugget,” she blasphemes finally. The moon snail is clearly not still where Harley had seen it, if she had seen it.

"I was holdin' it in my hands like this." Harley cups her hands together. "But it started gettin' all huffy and crawlin' out. So I put it back. But I guess I woke it up an’ all so it peaced out.”

"They don't generally enjoy being held, no,” Pamela confirms.

“But they’re so squishy.”

“Mhmm.”

“Eh,” emits out the side of Harley’s mouth. “You probably see plenty of ‘em at your place.”

“I tend to deport the gastropods I find in my garden.”

Harley cackles. “How much space do ya need?”

“I don’t use most of the house,” Pamela admits. “The garden’s where I spend my time.”

“But I bet ya throw some wicked parties.”

“Actually, no. I don’t like having guests in the house. It’s been a while.” Pamela downplays the _while_ , but it’s not compulsory information anyhow.

“You like what ya like. Looks like a pretty place ta lay out, that’s all.” Harley swivels her head, beginning to notice the wind blowing her floatie towards the opposite shore. “Aw, fuck.” She jumps in after it, showering Pamela with droplets.

Pamela’s struck with the sudden image of Harley in a bed of flowers. She would never allow that, of course, but her mind immediately begins building a bouquet to suit her.

It would be acceptable: Harley adjacent to the flowers, the soft pink baby’s breath, the flecked alstroemeria, the bi-colour hybrid tea roses, sweet and thorned.

She gives herself a slight shake. Harley. Flowers. How juvenile.

\--

Sunflowers for Harley.

“To celebrate the successful eradication of spider mites from your garden.”

“Aw, happy flowers!”

“Rhizome divisions were due this year and I thought you might enjoy some of the trimmings to liven up your—”

“Studio!” Harley finishes, holding the vase aloft and turning it about.

“I’ve put them in my homemade flower food, so they should keep longer than usual.”

“Ya worry too much, Red,” Harley says. “Everythin’ dies.”

The end of the week brings on a classic summer storm with monsoon-like rain and lightning arcing across the sky. The thunder keeps Pamela awake in bed.

That, and thoughts of the frail shack by the lake, and Harley inside. If the roof failed, if wind or lightning struck a nearby tree, if—

Something’s filtering through the din of the storm. Something unnatural. It’s the doorbell being rung repetitively.

Pulling on her dressing gown, Pamela takes the stairs down two at a time. It’s apparent even through the stained glass who her visitor is: Harley, drenched. Mascara is running down her cheeks and she’s wild-eyed as the storm.

“Sorry,” Harley says, futilely holding a water-logged bomber jacket closed around herself. “The power bit it an’ the roof started leakin’ in a coupla places. I put out some buckets but I couldn’t really see proper an’ I know you ain’t so good with guests so maybe I could wait out the storm under here or—”

Annoyed by the relief that ripples through her, Pamela brusquely grabs Harley’s hand and pulls her into the house. Pulls her up the stairs, through her bedroom, to the ensuite with its lavender bath salts and the only toilet in the house that’s been flushed recently.

“Get out of those wet things,” Pamela instructs, her mind on clean towels and a change of clothes and a hot bath.

She isn’t prepared for Harley taking her directive to its natural conclusion.

“It’s so big n’ sparkly in here,” Harley says, unhooking her fluorescent pink bra.

Pamela holds up the towel before Harley can slip the straps off her shoulders and gestures in the general direction of the bath.

“I’ll leave a change of clothes on the bed,” she adds quickly, making herself scarce.

Feeling like a feral creature, lost and unmannered, Pamela practices square breathing at the top of the stairs for five minutes before finding something with which to occupy herself. She busies herself with the kettle and teabags, all the standard accommodations offered to cold, wet stragglers that show up on doorsteps.

From her periphery, a figure pads into the kitchen. Harley’s fresh-faced and wearing her clothes, nothing more than a sweatshirt and cotton shorts, but Pamela’s mouth goes dry.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she ekes out, hands moving before she assigns them a purpose.

"Leaf water?” Harley grimaces.

"What do you want to drink?"

"Ya got hot chocolate?"

"I have cocoa, sugar, and nut milk," Pamela lists, mostly for her own benefit. "I can certainly make it."

"If you're offerin'," Harley says, clearly skeptical.

Pamela’s doesn’t prepare food in half-measures. She combines the primary ingredients on the stove, then adds a pinch of salt, ground espresso, vanilla extract, and a shot of coffee-flavoured liqueur for luck.

It works. “Best damn hot choc I’ve ever had,” Harley says, coming to accept the mug from her station by the window.

“I have a guest room in the south wing,” Pamela starts, cradling her own mug of calming turmeric and honey.

“Nah, ya got a couch? I like couches.”

“Suit yourself.”

She takes Harley to her living room with its velvet chesterfield sofa and double-high windows. Outside, the landscape is a blur of endless rain.

“This is perfect.” Harley bounces onto one end of the couch, wrapping herself in a knit throw. “Wanna watch a movie? You gotta watch somethin’ scary when a storm’s on. It’s the rule.”

Pamela switches on a nearby lamp. “Horror is not my preferred genre.”

“Come on. I’ll pick somethin’ stupid. Scary-stupid.” Harley picks up the remote, scrolling through offerings on Pamela’s streaming service. Pamela has no choice but to perch on the other end of the couch.

“No clowns, no guts, no creepy kids,” Harley runs down her criteria. “Aliens?” She checks with Pamela, stopped on a thumbnail of a poorly proportioned extraterrestrial invader.

Pamela hedges her bets. “Start it.”

And soon enough, she looks over and Harley’s asleep, head lolling on a cushion against the armrest. Her hair is still damp, frizzing lightly, ends pink and blue against emerald velvet.

The strength of Pamela’s longing is painful. She allows herself to brush hair off Harley’s face and cover her with a second blanket.

“You can keep pettin’ my hair, if ya want,” Harley mumbles. But Pamela opts to flee.

\--

Pamela wakes up aching and alone. She stands under a cold shower in the pre-morning until she’s numb, but still not numb enough to the heat that’s been blossoming under her skin since Harley trundled into her life, all sunnily defiant and breezily accepting of Pamela’s surliness. And in skimpy shorts no less.

When she walks out onto the back patio, Harley is standing there with her leg bent over her head.

"You look like you've never seen stretchin' before." Harley squints in Pamela’s direction.

"You're bendy," Pamela comments, not entirely in control of her voice.

"Sure am." Harley's interest in the subject fades as she zeroes in on the mug in Pamela's possession. "Izzat coffee?"

“There’s more in the pot. I have sugar in the cupboard above it, and non-dairy creamer in the fridge door.”

“Yes!” Harley releases her leg and dashes into the kitchen.

Pamela nurses her own coffee and surveys her garden. The shouts of her staff calling to one another permeate through to the privacy of her latticed patio laden with ivy. Between the unscheduled work to come and unscheduled houseguest, she feels off-kilter, high-strung.

Feet patter behind her, and she pivots.

“Find everything?”

“I never knew prissy coffee was so good,” Harley enthuses, about to say something else but snapping her mouth shut at an interruption.

“Miss Isley?” one of Pamela’s personnel prompts from the other side of the lattice.

“Yes,” Pamela calls back.

Hazel wends her way through the gap in the retaining wall towards them. She’s visibly startled by Harley, but sensibly closemouthed about it. “The bougainvillea arch blew over. And something’s wrong with the drainage by the orchard. We can’t figure it out. Maybe you should come take a look.”

Harley quickly drains her mug to a more manageable walking level. “I gotta go home and check out the damage anyway.”

“Do you need help? I could send someone with you,” Pamela suggests.

“I’ll be fine, mama bear.” Harley turns to go and throws up a hand in blasé goodbye with her back turned.

Pamela attends to urgent matters expeditiously. Despite her exceptional ability to compartmentalize, there is nevertheless a compartment for Harley, small but bright in the back of her mind. When nothing else requires her input, that’s where she goes.

She approaches Primrose Cottage to all the doors and windows thrown wide open and the figure of Harley on the roof, busily straightening out a tarp. The method of access? A rusted death contraption of a ladder. Over and above that, it’s too short of a tool for the job. There’s a gap between the edge of the roof and the top of the ladder Harley must’ve hauled herself up over.

"I found all this in the junk pile out front," Harley announces proudly, having spotted Pamela.

Pamela nods slowly. "Looks like you did."

Harley ambles closer to the side of the house. “I guess I’m done up here. Can ya hold the thing for me?”

“Gladly.”

Pamela widens her stance and holds tightly onto the ladder. Harley lowers herself easily to the top step, then holding onto the rain gutter, turns herself around to face the house, beginning the climb down.

One of the last rungs break with fantastic timeliness, and Harley falls backwards with a sharp expletive right into Pamela's arms.

Harley's light, and Pamela's been braced from the second she laid eyes on that ladder. She catches Harley neatly around the waist and slows her momentum further by sitting into a quarter squat. But it's not before they're pressed back to front, and Harley’s solid and real against her, somewhat sweaty and smelling of sunshine and fresh air.

"Jesus titty fuckin' Christ!" Harley's volume is just below a yell. “That was somethin’!” She hops around the garden, dispersing adrenaline.

“Are you injured?”

"Nah. Damn, you're strong." Harley reaches out and fondles Pamela's bicep before Pamela gains enough control over her faculties to step back.

"You could have borrowed a ladder from me,” Pamela chides mildly, smoothing down her hair.

"Right. Didn't think of that."

"Please, just mention it to me the next time you're about to risk life and limb for something as trivial as roof repair."

"Yeah, see, I don't really think 'bout those things," Harley admits. "Don’t get all mopey, I’m fine! Livin’!”

"Small consolation, believe me.”

"Aw, did I scare ya?”

“I’m relieved to not have found you fallen to your death.”

“So sensible. That’s what I keep ya around for.”

Harley pins Pamela briefly in place with a megawatt smile before Pamela breaks the spell.

“I came with something.” She fetches the pot with the cuttings she’s propagated from her own plant.

Harley accepts it immediately. “It’s so little!”

“It’s a pothos. For you. You can leave it in the dark, forget about it, kill almost all of it—not that you will, but it’ll come back. Which is why it’s also called devil’s ivy.”

“I kinda like those qualities.”

“I thought you would. You may also paint the pot if you’d like, it’s only terra cotta.”

“Oh, an’ I got somethin’ for you!”

Pamela trails Harley to her studio, wondering when this turned into an impromptu gift exchange.

“Oh no!” she gasps, horrified at what she finds there.

The water damage to Harley’s art is extensive. The single window in the room has blown out, and the canvases grouped near it are soggy and running. A pail sits half-full of cloudy water and debris against them—no indication whether it was placed before or after the breakage.

“It’s fine. Got more where they came from.” Harley skips to dry side of the room to a painting on an easel angled to reference the vase of sunflowers. The yellow is painted on heavily as expected, but there’s also blue, and red, and graduations between the two. It’s what befuddles Pamela.

“Sunflowers?”

“Not just flowers, but ya givin’ ‘em to me, an’ how they feel.” Harley’s eyes narrow. “Y’know.”

“Yes, absolutely.” Pamela scrutinizes the painting harder for a clue as to how sunflowers might feel to Harley.

“I gotta show you where to hang it,” Harley says, snatching it off the easel. She’s effectively inviting herself over, but Pamela is past minding.

On the walk back, Harley turns the painting every which way, seemingly undecided about the correct orientation. But she’s made up her mind by the time they reach the house, bounding indoors excitably.

“I think this goes in an office. Ya got one?”

“There is one, but I don’t use it. It’s dark. There’s a sitting room in the front of the house where I do office work.”

Pamela chaperones Harley there, where she observes the painting held up to several empty stretches of wall before Harley settles on a spot Pamela can see raising her eyes from her desk.

“That’ll do it,” Harley says decisively, holding out her free hand.

Pamela hands her a nail from the junk drawer and a paperweight. Harley completes the task capably, checking for squareness before letting the painting hang. Then she dusts her hands, regarding Pamela with arms akimbo.

“Are ya gonna give me a proper tour or not?”

“There’s not much to see inside. In fact, you’ve just seen about all of the inhabited parts.”

“’Kay, show me what’s important.”

Pamela takes the solarium exit, which she has converted into a plant nursery. Harley walks by the long tables of seedlings in their peat pots under grow lights with a gasp.

“Oh, they’re babies! It’s your baby room.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Pamela holds the door, letting Harley scoot by, but not without brushing herself against Pamela’s front. The grass squelches under them as Harley glares at a cabin in the distance.

“Whose digs are those?”

“Nobody’s. It’s a break room and restroom for the staff.”

“Ya really don’t like people in your house, huh?”

“It’s been a recurring theme in my life, yes.”

“How ‘bout those?”

Harley kicks a foot at a group of greenhouses east of the house.

“Jungle.” Pamela points to the geodesic dome greenhouse.

“Rare and delicate collection.” She nods to the more standardized gable-roof.

“My workshop.” Pamela indicates the one closest to the house.

"Ya have a studio?"

“It’s probably not what you think,” Pamela warns, letting Harley into the building.

It’s more laboratory than greenhouse with its flasks of tiny seedlings and stainless steel equipment. Pamela checks on her seedlings, half an eye on Harley winding her way around the worktables.

“We weren’t on the same page,” Harley confirms. “It’s sciencey in here.”

“I publish botanical research. It’s par for the course.”

“You’re so smart.” Harley looks down a microscope with nothing in it. “I haven’t used one of these in ages.”

“What’d you do before art?”

“Buncha stuff.” Harley rolls herself a short distance on Pamela’s pneumatic stool. “I've been a lotta people. Dr. Quinzel, Harleen, Harley.”

“You were a doctor?”

“A whatchamacallit. Psychiatrist.” Harley rolls her eyes. “It’s stupid. Me, right? Beats me how this crap brain ever did that.” She scowls at Pamela, suddenly ill-tempered. "I don't need ya feelin' sorry for me.”

“So your brain works differently than it used to. It’s not a value judgement.” Pamela sidesteps. "Where did you go to school? You never told me where you’re from.”

“Gotham,” Harley responds easily.

“What a coincidence.”

“No way!”

Pamela tampers Harley’s zeal with a shake of her head. "I didn’t thrive there. Gotham has a way of using you up and spitting you out.”

"But the city’s so fun—” Harley reconsiders. “Maybe the people are made a little wrong.” She taps her own temple.

“The people are the city, Harley. People built that city, cut down the forest, filled it pollution. They invite their own fate.”

“I liked the ones that made cheeseburgers,” Harley protests weakly.

“I make an impressive mushroom burger,” Pamela offers against her better instincts.

Harley makes a face, but it turns thoughtful. “I mean, ya got a grill, an’ that can make most anythin’ good.”

“Then pull up a chair.” Pamela throws her an expectant look on her way out.

“Should I bring somethin’? Like, uh—” Harley hurries to catch up, scrunching her face up, likely cataloguing the contents of her pantry.

“Don’t worry about it.”

She tasks Harley with picking out a few ripe tomatoes from her garden while she gets supper underway. Pamela doesn’t drink often, but she mixes two Long Island iced teas in highball glasses, having to reference a barkeeper’s book on her recipe shelf. It takes several trips between the kitchen and the bistro set on the veranda to accompany their meal with caramelized onions, sauces and relishes, and a tray of sides.

Harley progresses through the backyard in stop-motion between Pamela’s trips, investigating the hummingbird feeder, visiting with a viceroy butterfly, and finally, discovering the hammock. Pamela approaches with an iced tea and a plate.

“Hell fuckin’ yeah, fries,” Harley says, clearly pleased with the progression of events. She receives the offerings gleefully, then hesitates poised to take a sip. “D’ya want help?”

“No. Please relax after your brush with death.”

Harley snorts but doesn’t object, laying the plate of fries on her stomach with a pleased sigh. Pamela steps away with a quaint warmth percolating through her.

Checking the temperature of the grill, she lays marinated portobello mushrooms onto the cooking grate, blistering peppers and toasting burger buns a la minute. She assembles the burgers grill-side, open-faced for the addition of personal finishing touches.

When Pamela turns around with full plates, Harley’s abandoned the hammock in favour of heaping dressing onto her side salad at the table. Pamela serves her.

“Why’d ya make me this baby burger?”

“It’s small but satisfying. Try it.”

Harley pores over the insides, but not having found anything else requiring clarification, replaces the top bun and takes a bite. Her eyes dart from side to side in concentration.

Pamela nibbles on a fallen tomato, trying not to stare overtly.

"That's good sauce," Harley mumbles with her mouth full.

“The importance of condiments cannot be overrated.”

“I didn’t know ya could do that with mushrooms.”

Pamela tucks into her own burger with satisfaction. “Live and learn.”

Harley expresses an occasional, but surprising interest in the birds visiting the feeder and birdbath. Mostly, she seems content to devote herself to the inhalation of the food before her, a compliment all on its own.

“Ya sure know how ta feed a girl.” Harley stands with a groan, extending into a catlike stretch. Her eyes pop open and with arms still outstretched, she winks at Pamela. “Walk it off?”

Evening is falling as they walk through the further reaches of the garden. Sweet Almond Bush perfumes the air, and Pamela catches Harley taking deep, slow breaths.

“Which one’s ya favourite plant?”

“They all have their own merits—”

“Yeah, yeah, ya can’t pick favourite kid, whatever.” Harley pauses and looks sidelong at Pamela. “Your fave has gotta be one of the spiky ones. Yer thorn garden’s the one ‘em reporters write all that boring shit about.”

Pamela raises her eyebrows, faintly amused. “Have you been reading?”

“I didn’t know if you were ever gonna let me come over an’ I got curious, alright?”

“The thorn garden _is_ my darling. The spurges—”

“The what?”

“Yes, the spurges—”

“What the fuck kinda name is spurges?”

“I think you will find a lot of such names in botanical classification,” Pamela says primly.

Harley gives her an impish grin. “Give ‘em to me.”

Pamela eyes her impassively. “As I was saying, the spurges are a genus of flowering plants with peculiar floral structures. Ones from desert regions can be quite like cacti. The Crown of Thorns is a spurge. Very poisonous, very sharp, but beautiful. A holy plant in some cultures. Not hardy, but it’ll bloom all year if you keep its conditions right.”

She gestures to the six-foot succulent shrub, thick prickly branches topped with obovate green leaves and small but startlingly red bracts subtending even tinier yellow flowers. Bristling but delicate.

“Huh. I like it. It’s so red.” All at once, Harley’s attention transfers from the Crown of Thorns to Pamela. “Like ya hair,” Harley says, fingering a lock of hair under Pamela's left ear reverently. "An’ your eyes are so green.”

“Yes,” Pamela eventually replies.

"You're a pretty lady.” Harley eyes grow a little a dreamy, then she snatches her hand away with an angry growl. "God, I'm a dumb fuckin’ scrub. Why’d I say that? Who says that?”

Pamela reaches out and puts her hand on Harley’s shoulder. She’s quaking angrily under her palm, only enough to be perceptible. “Did you mean that?” Pamela asks, just loud enough to break over Harley’s frustrated muttering.

Harley stills. She turns halfway back to Pamela. “Yeah, of course I did. You’re real pretty.” She turns all the way back. “Prettiest lady I’ve ever seen.”

There isn’t much warning. Harley kisses Pamela like she does most things, abruptly. Her hand shoots up to curl around the back of Pamela’s head and neck, and she yanks Pamela in a little too vigorously. Their noses and teeth knock together before Pamela’s able to correct course.

Then Harley’s not there as suddenly as she was. “I’m sorry. If ya didn’t want that. I—”

Years ago, Pamela might have felt transgressed upon, and indignant for it. But she can’t help but feel as if Harley might have preparing her for this moment, with her touches and her looks and her teasing.

Harley’s mouth continues to move noiselessly around her words when Pamela’s hands finally find the curve of her waist, bringing her in again at a better angle and speed.

The kiss is inquisitive to start, but grows more heatedly, headily fast, barely breaking for breath.

Pamela’s more affected than she ought to be, but the tension’s built too far, stretched her too thin. Still, kissing surrounded by thorns is somewhat ill-advised, and when Harley forces Pamela back a step, her head grazes a low-hanging branch of black locust.

"Ow!"

Pamela reaches out and frees Harley’s hair with amusement and some urgency. She takes her by the belt loop. “Come on.”

Harley’s on her once they’re thorn-free, nearly bowling Pamela over. But she kisses Harley soft, pulling back when Harley presses too heavily into her, not permitting her impatience.

It’s for another time. Another place. Harley seems to only have one speed, but it’s not going to work for Pamela. Not if she wants more than the morsels she’s been getting. Not if she wants it all.

“Red,” Harley whines, when Pamela retreats one time too many.

“We’re going at my pace,” Pamela tells Harley directly into her ear, taking a moment to tour the soft skin under it with her mouth, and savouring the violent shiver that comes after. “Don’t worry. You won’t miss a thing.”

It’s too long of way back to the house.

Pamela loses her sandals somewhere between the thorn garden and the pond. Harley’s stretched Pamela’s shirt multiple ways and disposes of it altogether onto the tomatoes at the end of the vegetable patch.

They upend a chair in the kitchen. It’s still further upstairs to Pamela’s bedroom. She stretches Harley out over the steps to roll her cut-offs down her legs, but Harley’s look of discomfort spurs Pamela onwards in search of softer surfaces.

In the bedroom, Pamela backs Harley into the bed. She peels off Harley’s crop top, discarding with the tease of a thing gladly. A quick snap of her fingers unhooks Harley’s bra to reveal pert breasts with peachy nipples invitingly tight.

Then pressing Harley back onto the bed to do away with her panties, Pamela takes the measure of the lean form draped on her bed.

Harley’s sleek and dynamic, like a gymnast or a dancer. Or a boxer maybe, deceptively relaxed but always coiled tight. She stares back at Pamela with a challenge in her eyes.

It’s foreign map of pale skin and scars, some textured, some flat and shiny, crisscrossing Harley’s body like vines. Pamela measures the slash running down the back of Harley’s shoulder with her hand, runs her tongue down the gash along Harley’s eighth rib, smooths her fingers down the ridged discoloration on her hip, feels the texture of the welt on her knee with her lips.

Harley is wonderfully responsive. Pamela finds herself the thrall of an intoxicating blend of power and reverence. When she finally makes her way back up, there’s a wet spot on the sheet under Harley. She buries in her smug smile in the crook of her neck, Harley in constant motion under her, wandering, restless hands gripping one part of Pamela then another.

“Fuck’s sake! Red. Just—won’t ya—”

“Polite,” Pam admonishes, lips brushing the shell of Harley’s ear.

Harley yields on the end of a gasp. “Please.”

Pamela runs a hand down Harley’s body, now less explorative and more purposeful, muscles rippling in her wake. She trails down into the valley between Harley’s legs, and what she finds there is thick and molten, almost too hot to touch.

There’s not a whit of resistance when Pamela slips two fingers inside. She watches a delectable flush spread all the way down Harley’s neck to her chest, all the more pronounced against the alabaster of her skin.

“Oh fuck yeah,” Harley bites out with a sharp shudder.

She squeezes hard around Pamela’s fingers, but Pamela takes her calmly through it.

“Faster,” Harley pleads, having plenty of thoughts about Pamela’s play at control.

Pamela pulls out.

The first syllable of desire and frustration spills out of Harley’s mouth before she starts on her clit, rubbing in a precise, deliberate pattern.

It doesn’t take long to fine tune her movements to the perfect amount of friction, of pressure. Harley’s her own guidebook, the frequency and pitch of her responses growing as Pamela takes her apart in just the right way.

She doesn’t let up until Harley comes again, hand reaching down to squeeze Pamela’s wrist with painful desperation. But she holds it there, as if she’s unsure whether she wants Pamela to stop or continue.

“More, inside,” Harley begs again.

That, Pamela does. She drives back into Harley with three fingers. The broken, choked noise that escapes Harley rips right through the centre of her.

Pamela can’t catch herself. She feels herself throbbing in time with Harley’s rhythmic cries, building in volume when she adds the force her hips behind every thrust. She’s more concerned with thoroughness over speed, and it doesn’t seem that Harley minds.

For all the vocalization that came before, this orgasm is silent. Harley’s mouth opens, her body pulling so taut that Pamela’s afraid she’ll snap. She's sure that Harley’s marked the skin of her back thoroughly with her nails, but Pamela forgives it easily it because she’s has been so, so good.

“Fuckin’ hell, that was three.” Harley’s voice is weak, used, spent. “I’ve never—I don’t—”

“Shh, sweet pea,” Pamela murmurs.

“You gotta let me touch ya,” Harley insists drowsily, hands petting at Pamela even as she’s drawing the blankets up around them.

“Next time.” Pamela smooths a few blonde strays from her forehead soothingly. She listens to Harley’s breath even out, still half-dressed to her prickling, bitter sense of relief.

\--

The morning after, Pamela wakes up later than as is custom, but early enough that Harley sleeps in another hour after her.

She’s in the kitchen when Harley announces her wakefulness by running through the house yelling about getting Betty serviced in town. Skidding to a stop at the kitchen entryway on her way to the front door, Harley cuts an odd figure. She’s raided Pamela’s closet, opting for a combination of faded t-shirt tucked into striped, cropped trousers that Pamela would never choose for herself.

"Who's Betty?”

"You've seen her. She knows ya.” Harley tumbles outside without bothering to lace her boots. “Bye!”

It’s the thick of summer, and Pamela is packing moss into the base of a floral sculpture with sweat trickling down her back when Harley rematerializes with Betty.

Betty is Harley’s truck. Its colour is actually a firetruck red, and it rolls to a stop on the service road from which she can see Pamela at work.

“Red!” Harley jumps down and slams the door, approaching with cheerful abandon. “Whazzat?”

“Ornaments. I open my garden to the public once a year. There’s quite a bit of extra work to do in the lead-up. I might be more absent in the next week and a half.”

“I can help.”

“Harley, this is not a snub, but all of my staff have formal education in horticulture.”

Harley jerks her left shoulder up, unbothered. “Somebody’s gotta push the wheelbarrows.”

“Well, I do need to barricade the more hazardous parts of the thorn garden.” Pamela picks out a roll of temporary fencing from the job wheelbarrow next to her. “But are you sure you’re willing to do grunt work? It’ll still get done if you decide you want to sit inside and watch a movie instead.”

“I’m good at gruntin’.”

“You—” Pamela begins, but Harley’s already off, rolls of fencing under her arms. Perhaps for the best, because Pamela hadn’t been sure about the remainder of that sentence.

Harley’s presence is a sensitizing thing, never leaving the periphery of her awareness. Yet her earnestness buoys Pamela. All that easy enthusiasm for her and the single day crowds will queue to see her unique cultivars, her thorn garden, her hothouse jungle, and her heritage blooms.

The two pressing thoughts swirl into an impenetrable miasma. Pamela finds herself working with restless, fidgety energy, the burning fatigue in her arms anchoring her to her the tangible world.

It’s late afternoon when Harley returns to her side holding thirty-two inch loppers, knees dirtied and leaves caught in her haphazard updo.

“Hazel taught me ta prune a tree.”

“And what sort of reimbursement are you receiving for doing her work for her?”

Pamela wordlessly points to Harley’s boots and then her own, already waiting in the mudroom sink. Harley struggles out of her footwear using the heel-step method, ignoring the bench.

“We’re square up. It was kinda relaxing. Is there a reason ya only got lady helpers?"

"Other than women being superior at just about everything? No,” Pamela replies airily, scouring mightily with a shoe brush.

Harley laughs, then scans Pamela carefully, gauging her. “Are ya gonna eat?” She waits. “Red?”

“Not yet.”

Harley touches her forearm. “Are ya mad?”

"No, you haven’t done anything wrong.” Pamela works soap into a boot with a little more force. “Sometimes when I’m feeling stressed, I need to feel in control and I have to clean or work.”

Harley nods, dashing off into the house and returning with one of her portable miniature video games. She settles onto the mudroom bench, making the occasional sound effect at the screen. It’s what draws Pamela, slowly but surely, out of her trance and to ground.

“I can be a little neurotic,” she admits finally, setting the footwear out to dry.

"Sure.” Harley offers her unbothered, casual acceptance. “If you’re done with that come back ta mine, I wanna make waffles.”

They watch something mindless over waffles with fresh fruit and coconut cream. It’s not Pamela’s typical dinner, but Harley makes it for her. She then herds Pamela to the bathroom with a new toothbrush rescued from the clutter on the coffee table, and again into bed.

Harley’s bedroom is barely bigger than her bed. The personality in it is the biggest of all. The mattress on the floor has been piled twice as high with mismatched pillows and blankets. Fairy lights have been strung against the window. A misappropriated neon bar sign casts the room in magenta. And all of it smells comfortingly of the sugary-sweet products Harley uses.

Harley drops into the bed next to her, eyes hopeful. But Pamela feels scraped raw, exposed nerve endings revolting at the texture of the quilt, the closeness.

Something in her body language tips Harley off. “Are ya okay? With—” Harley waves in the air between them. It’s fitting.

"It’s not anything you’ve done. It’s me. I feel a bit overwhelmed right now.”

"What d'ya need me to do?"

"Just—don't touch me. For a little while."

Harley makes an upset frown but takes one of the pillows off the bed instead, crushing it to her chest.

"Do you wanna talk?" Harley asks, quieter than Pamela's ever known her to be.

"Can you tell me a story?"

"Sure, I got lots. Did I tell ya 'bout one time me 'n my friend Dinah got these chocolates but they weren't really chocolate?”

Pamela sinks into something better than silence—

"An' I kicked him right in the bits—”

—Harley's voice anchoring her late into the night, full of life.


	2. Chapter 2

Before dawn of the concurrently least and most anticipated morning of Pamela’s year, Pamela’s awake and doing paperwork over breakfast.

“Big day,” Harley announces on entry, visibly enjoying Pamela’s green pantsuit and sheer silk blouse. “Look at ya all dolled up ‘n shit. Me-ow.”

Pamela does up one more button to Harley’s disappointment.

“I have to be the boss today and _not_ a wanton sexpot.”

“Why can’t ya be both?”

Pamela supplies Harley with a pointed look and nothing more.

“Didja sleep at all?” questions Harley with the same look back, topping off Pamela’s mug with the coffee pot before preparing her own.

“A bit,” Pamela replies evasively.

“Can’t lie ta me. You’re spikier than usual.”

“I suppose you haven’t seen me like this before.”

Harley looks up from the mound of sugar on her spoon. “Like what?”

“Overwrought. I tend to emotionally flatline so this is a deviation from norm.”

“This is nothin’. I’m not sayin’ ya don’t feel but you don’t yell or punch stuff or—y’know.”

Pamela takes a sharp breath. “No, I don’t,” she says with conviction.

Harley’s spoon jangles against the sides of her mug in the ensuing silence. She joins Pamela at the table, chair scraping across the floorboards.

“Why d’ya do this every year if it stresses you out this much?”

Pamela hesitates, trying to parse a complicated answer. “I want people to see. And understand. There are infinite possibilities when you care for the earth instead of exploiting it.”

Harley leans as far as she can over the table, capturing Pamela’s gaze. “Even if the jackoffs out there can’t see it, ya got lots to be proud of.”

“Thank you. What’re you going to do today?”

“Don’t worry ‘bout me. I’ll hang out.”

Pamela sips her coffee with her eyebrows raised.

“I know how ta chill. Relax, Red.”

“I have to do a final walkthrough and monologue to the staff.” Pamela hauls herself out of her seat and tucks it in. “There are breakfast cookies in the oven.”

“Goddess,” Harley proclaims.

It perfects Pamela’s final veneer of polish as she descends into the day.

The day is a whirlwind of questions and answers, delegating and crowd control, and interviews. In the background, Harley falls naturally into a peacekeeping sort of role without instruction from anyone.

“Hey! Are ya blind? You see the motherfuckin’ tape? Keep yer sasquatch feet off the damn flowers!”

Pamela carefully avoids eye contact with her staff and faces the camera about to go live.

The sun has nearly set by the time the last straggler has been escorted out and the road clears of vehicles. The media is the last to leave, with their cameras and microphones and recorders and notepads. Pamela shakes her last hand of the day, turning only to be met with another plea for her attention.

“I want an itemized list of any and all damage by tomorrow morning,” Pamela instructs, jittery as she signs off another checklist. “And I want two people counting out ticket sales. Individually and double-checking each other’s work. No mistakes in the annual report.”

She looks over each of the faces around her.

“Well done today, all of you.”

All but one of the gathered group scatter. The high-strung nervous anxiety from the day precipitates into a different kind of energy. Harley’s caught on, judging by the heated, rapt look she’s sending Pamela’s way.

“I think my staff can manage an hour of clean-up if you’d like to _confer_ inside.”

“Schmucks,” Harley adds helpfully, already taking Pamela by the sleeve and heading to the house.

They get as far as inside the house and out of view of the oversize kitchen windows. Harley takes Pamela by the lapels, and she cups the back of Harley’s head, cushioning her against the force of their kiss. Harley’s hands go from a vise grip on Pamela’s blazer to pushing it off her, hands shameless against the slippery silk underneath.

Pamela wastes no time, tugging the straps of Harley’s bright yellow overalls off her shoulders and dropping to her knees. A purple thong adds to the pile pooling at Harley’s feet. Pamela helps her step out of it, eager to part Harley’s legs enough for access, enough for Pamela to run her tongue up the silky length of her.

The musky salt-sweet of it sends Pamela spiraling. She can’t help but hum with approval and _want_ , delving her tongue right into the source.

Harley’s response is an absolutely obscene sound Pamela could not hope to replicate. Running her fingers through to the crown of Pamela’s head, holding red hair back, Harley’s other hand digs for purchase against the wainscoting.

But letting Harley brace herself is not on Pamela’s to-do. She fixes her attention on Harley’s clit, flicking her tongue against the tip before swirling more firmly around it and against it. She resorts to light suction when Harley squirms too much for any sort of precision, almost surfacing to tell Harley to hold still.

In the end, she can’t quite tear herself away. Checking Harley’s balance with a run up her leg, Pamela plunges two fingers into her, ending each thrust with a slight come-hither.

She draws out whimpers that work up into a drawn-out keen. Harley finds purchase on Pamela’s shoulders, and Pamela sits higher, taking her weight. She strokes Harley slow through the flutter of her muscles, easing the pressure of her mouth.

Pamela wipes her chin, looks up, and makes eye contact. This Harley is pure sin, eyes half-mast, lips swollen and bite-bruised. It gets her to her feet and ripping off the rest Harley’s clothes—amounting to one pink bandeau—while Harley’s knees are still weak, with the singular intent of devouring her whole.

A foolish mistake. She’s forgotten Harley’s stamina. Fingers graze the top of her waistband, undoing the hook-and-eye closure, then panic’s rising knife-edged in Pamela’s chest. She shoves Harley away out of pure instinct.

Bouncing lightly back against the wall, Harley’s wide-eyed look of shock transforms in a combative sneer. “Iunno where ya get off makin’ stuff up ‘bout me, but I ain’t a pillow princess.”

“I’m not—” Pamela holds her hands up pleadingly. “Harley, you misunderstand.”

“Then help me understand,” Harley says, losing some of her sharpness. “That’s all you gotta do.”

Pamela lets out a sharp breath, sinking to sit with her back against the wall. Harley follows shortly across from her, unselfconscious in her nakedness.

“My professor when I was at university… he took advantage of me. In more ways than one. I was different then. Shy. Quiet. I didn’t know how to stop it, how to ask for help, what to do.”

“But ya got out.”

“I was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. And when there came the possibility he’d be exposed for what he’d done to me, he took his own life.”

The look on Harley’s face is murderous. “Fuckin’ arsewipe.”

“Yes, that.” Pamela closes her eyes for the next part. “It’s difficult for me to let someone touch me and feel safe. To not feel in control of what’s happening to me. To let go.”

“What was his name?”

Pamela answers with suspicion, not half convinced Harley won’t find his grave and defile it. “Jason. Jason Woodrue.”

“Too many fuckin’ J-holes in this world!”

Startled by the outburst, Pamela retracts slightly. “You know one?”

“Mistah J. He wasn’t always nice. Took his shit out on me. An’ he had a lotta shit.” Harley slides further down the wall. “You got a lotta shit too, but you—when you lay hands on me I don’t want you ta stop.”

“You can always tell me if you want to,” Pamela adds. “Stop, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Harley looks away. “He was always nice ta me after. Nicer than anybody’d ever been ta me. Y’know?”

“I know,” Pamela says, knowing.

“There’s too much talkin’ n’ feelin’ happening.” Harley stands suddenly, vibrating with a strange energy. “Let’s go for a swim!”

“Harley, it’s dark out and you’re naked.”

"Don't tell me ya ain’t never skinny dipped in your own lake,” Harley sniffs. “I do it all the time.”

“You—what?”

Harley sneaks a peek around the corner to the kitchen doors, still thrown wide open. “I think yer helpers bounced.”

“But it’s not completely private.”

“What’re ya talkin’ about? You don’t have neighbours ‘cept me.”

“I don’t own the road,” Pamela points out.

“I never see anybody on it. You can stay by the trees if ya want.” Harley gambols into the kitchen. “I’m goin’ with or without ya.”

“Fine,” Pamela concedes, successfully worn down. “Hold on, I’m bringing towels.”

“An’ take those off,” Harley demands, pointing up and down at Pamela’s suit. “We’re doin’ this right.”

Pamela comes back in a robe, with an additional one for Harley, and a flashlight. Harley sniggers at her but dons her robe gamely. She breaks into a jog ahead of Pamela, flashlight zigzagging across the path to the lake.

The robe hits the ground and Harley dashes the six paces to the lake. She executes a shallow dive with an excited cheer, appearing again long seconds later surprisingly far from the shore, a white and wraithlike figure against black-blue water.

“C’mon sourpuss! The water’s great!”

Pamela reaches for the tie around her waist, and Harley watches with hawklike interest. But Pamela doesn’t bother with ceremony, nor is she bashful about her body. She undresses briskly and leaves the robe in a neat square.

She enters the lake far more slowly, letting her body adjust to the temperature. When she emerges, combing her hair back off her face, Harley’s disappeared.

Pamela swims to where she thinks Harley had been, feeling a disturbance in the water. A wandering hand feathers across her backside. Harley pops up, mimicking an animalistic growl before closing her teeth around Pamela’s shoulder, snorting in delight when she garners the shriek she wants.

“You’re a barbarian,” Pamela laughs.

The tease seems to please Harley that much more. She boosts off towards the other end of the lake with a giggle, splashing Pamela with a kick of her leg.

Pamela’s left to tread water, observing Harley’s play. She’s a strong swimmer—acrobatic, even. Pamela suspects she’s been taking advantage of their lake far more than Pamela has been. To have thought she’d ever wanted to deny Harley her enjoyment of nature.

She turns her eyes skyward. It’s a clear night with a nearly full moon. The stars are a glittering pointillist composition, somehow simultaneously immense but far away. So many years of Pamela’s life have been spent under a polluted sky. It’s an exhilarating thought that there will come a day where those years won’t be the greater number.

Harley plows into her unexpectedly. “Stop thinkin’ so much.”

“Stop interrupting my thinking.”

Harley wrestles Pamela to the shore until they find their feet and stumble, laughing and breathless.

She finds Harley warm and wriggling over her, brilliant under moonlight on the shore of the lake. Under her, it’s a contrast in sensations. The grass is cold and textured, perfumed with dark earth and crisp newness.

Harley kisses her luxuriously for delicious minutes, taking the lead easily, insisting on a scorching tempo that sets Pamela ablaze. Before long, Pamela’s groaning into her mouth, still aroused from earlier.

It’s a monumental undertaking to slow it down, but Pamela manages to peel her lips away.

“I don’t want to stop, but I’m going to get too worked up.”

“Then don’t.” Harley wraps herself around Pamela, rutting their hips together.

It takes Pamela a moment to respond, writhing aimlessly, soaked in sensation. “But I can’t—”

“How ‘bout this,” Harley suggests, taking Pamela’s hand and placing it in between her own legs. “Just let me help.”

The mere pressure of her own hand resting against her clit gets Pamela flushed and heavy-eyed. Especially as Harley leans down to nip at her bottom lip, dipping her tongue teasingly into Pamela’s mouth. Her hands move down to cup Pamela’s breasts, thumbs working over painfully stiff nipples.

Either Pamela’s hips move first or her hand does. All her body knows is the pressure and rhythm she needs. It clearly excites Harley, and she sets upon Pamela with renewed vigour.

The gift that is Harley’s mouth leaves nibbling imprints down Pamela’s neck, her collarbone, down her sternum to her breasts. It’s that dextrous, generous tongue that takes Pamela to greater heights than her own fingers on her clit, and she’s very nearly there when Harley says, sweet as honey:

“Lose control for me, doll.”

That tumbles Pamela completely into incoherence.

She recovers to Harley straddling her leg, and not in any innocent way. "Didya make it?"

"Yes, yes I did."

"Good. You're so fuckin' hot.” Harley rolls off Pamela and onto her back. “I gotta get myself off, it won't take a minute."

"Ya don't hafta help or anythin'," she adds, hand plunging between her legs unceremoniously.

But Pamela does anyway, rolling up against Harley’s side with single-minded intent. With her forehead resting against Harley’s temple, she nudges Harley’s hand out of the way to press the flat of her hand against her clit as she slips inside. Almost as soon as she does, Harley’s clamping her thighs around her hand, quivering helplessly.

Harley’s moan tapers into a sigh. "Told ya it wouldn't take much. You're so fuckin'—" Harley stops herself. "I already said that."

"I don't mind hearing it again," Pamela admits, charmed.

"Yer hot. It's cold as balls out here."

“I noticed that.” Pamela starts patting around for their robes.

Dressed again, there’s an interlude to pick twigs and grass off each other and exchange bashful smiles before Harley steps towards the road.

"Don't know 'bout you but I'm runnin' home.” She presses her lips together. “I hope I got hot water.”

"I definitely have hot water,” Pamela offers, after only a slight pause.

Harley looks back at her, blue eyes luminous. "'Kay. Race ya.”

The moon and stars illuminate well enough for them to cross the garden without incident, although Pamela can’t quite commit to a full-blown sprint the way Harley can. Windmilling to a stop on Pamela’s back patio, Harley waits for her to close the distance with a grin.

A quick hot rinse under the shower later, Pamela wraps Harley first in a fluffy towel before drying herself off. They climb gladly under the sheets together, clean and pink.

"Nice bed. Smells like flowers,” Harley says.

“Thanks.”

They stare at each other for a short moment, uncertain, before Harley giggles and tugs Pamela into a jumble of wet hair and tangled limbs.

\--

Harley is if one thing irrepressibly eager. There are light, purple-pink bruises running the length of Pamela’s neck, and one perfectly shaped like two sets of teeth on her shoulder that she doesn’t remember, most likely acquired when she was—occupied.

“That’s,” Harley says, joining Pamela at the bathroom mirror, “a lot.”

She continues to inspect the bruises on Pamela’s reflection in silence, not quite meeting her eyes.

“Harley.” Pamela turns away from the mirror, extending a hand to tilt Harley’s chin up. “I like when you get excited. I trust you not to cause me actual harm. And if ever necessary, I would tell you if you did, and I know you would respect that.”

“You bet yer fat head I would,” Harley says immediately.

“That was unflattering, but good to know.”

Her prickliness merely gives Harley cause to snicker before reaching for Pamela’s toothbrush. Pamela declines to comment. She makes a note to throw it out later.

“I’m gonna go paint a lil’ today, I think.”

“Can I show you something before you go?”

“Yeah,” Harley garbles, toothpaste foam dripping down her chin.

It’s all Pamela can do smile fondly and bequeath her a face towel.

After morning ablutions, she takes Harley to the smoking room. She’d been in here days before, cleaning away disuse, but there’s nothing to be done for the faint hint of tobacco soaked into the wall panels.

It’s a grand room, fitted with an arabesque rug, a six-light gasolier, and mission-style lamps, reeking of smoke and old wealth. Harley lets out a long whistle.

Pamela joins her impassively, gesturing to the cherry wood easel near the window. “My father enjoyed recreational painting. I thought you might enjoy a leak-proof art room.”

“All that an’ leak-proof?” Harley scuttles up to a curio cabinet full of fossils.

“I know for fact there are still art supplies somewhere.” Pamela surveys the cabinetry and shelving lining the walls. “Help yourself, really. It’s not of use to me. Paint here, take his things.”

Plopping down onto a red leather wingback, Harley picks up a hand-carved cigar box on the side. “Shit, he was pimpin’.”

“It’s stuffy,” Pamela corrects, by now mildly uncomfortable to be inside the room.

“So ya don’t mind if I get paint on stuff?

“No. Nobody’s been in that chair since he passed.”

Harley carefully selects and sniffs a cigar. “Were ya close?

“No. I wasn’t close to either of my parents.”

“What’re they fer,” Harley says, swatting the air dismissively.

“Gaudy rooms, evidently.”

“Yeah, but there’s good shit in here.” Harley yanks free a canvas board behind a desk, nearly toppling herself over. “You’re gettin’ me all tickled,” she says, muffled as she leans further into an open chest.

“I’ll bring you some coffee,” Pamela offers. For someone so set on turning her back to the world, she’s gone and invited the world in to stay a while. But not the world—only Harley, who is—

“Yer my fave,” Harley calls after her.

\--

Harley crosses the road and crests a small to hill to find Pamela participating in idle end-of-day small talk with two of her staff.

“Hey Harl,” one of the girls acknowledges her, surprisingly familiar.

“You guys are stinky,” remarks Harley, joining their social semicircle.

A deep sigh from the group. “One of the bags of mulch exploded.”

“Yum.”

“There’s a reason we’re not the brains of the operation.”

Harley’s eyes rove over the other women before settling on Pamela, taking in her soiled clothing, then higher to rest on the bandana tied into a side knot around her neck.

"Oh, yeah. Found this by the lake.” Harley waggles the flashlight for emphasis.

Pamela can't stop herself. She blushes. The girls peruse her curiously, unused to any demonstrativeness from her. She reaches out to snatch the flashlight out of mid-air. But Harley’s shine grows, perhaps approaching excessively self-satisfied.

“’Kay, losers. I gotta find my phone,” Harley announces, heading up Pamela’s driveway.

“I like her,” someone says.

“Please go home and bathe,” Pamela urges, departing the conversation.

\--

Summer, as it turns out, isn’t eternal. Autumn is late and colourful all on its own.

It continues the way it has been. They don’t so much call on each other than fall together, repeatedly, inexorably.

Pamela takes Harley over the edge as many times as she’ll take it, then pleasures herself in the aftermath, Harley’s hands on her everywhere but _there_.

She doesn’t miss Harley watching her face hungrily, placing her own hand over Pamela’s to feel her movements. She even catches Harley holding her breath, whimpering when Pamela jerks in her arms, losing herself in sensations only Pamela should feel.

One night, Pamela’s there. She’s working herself towards a peak that’s become harder and harder to climb, with Harley’s lips and teeth feeling like a torturous brand against her skin.

She needs more. She lets her hand fall to the side with a groan of discontent.

Harley cocks her head, face wrinkled with confusion. “Why d’ya stop?”

“I want,” Pamela decides, “I want you.”

It turns a light on in Harley. “Really?”

Pamela nods, biting her lip as Harley rears back as if about to jump on her, but catching herself in time to drop a smattering of kisses onto Pamela’s face.

Her lips are everywhere for frantic moments, on Pamela’s for a lips for a kiss, on the sensitive spot just under her ear, the hollow of her throat. They stay fixated on Pamela’s chest for some time, testing the tender skin around her nipples before teasing the sensitive buds into agonizing points.

Harley moves lower, kissing her belly, and Pamela stiffens from head to toe.

“No, don’t, let me see you—”

“Hey.” Harley’s eyes fill up Pamela’s field of view, pupils blown to space. “It’s okay. It’s me.”

Then Harley kisses her through and through, until she’s canting her hips ups, searching for an outlet only Harley can give.

She watches, barely breathing, as Harley reaches between her own legs and slicks her hand with her own arousal before returning it to her folds. It’s wholly unnecessary, but unbelievably sexy. Pamela stops breathing altogether at the image of Harley’s shining fingers sliding against her, circling her clit, then massaging, deeper and harder and more rhythmic.

Weakly, she grabs Harley’s wrist and moves her hand ever so slightly lower.

“Okay, Red?” Harley blinks owlishly, wetting her lips.

Pamela can only manage a nod. Harley feels Pamela out for herself, making sure. She toys there at her entrance, shallowly penetrating but withdrawing, until Pamela’s sure she’s about to combust, or collapse into some formless embodiment of pure need.

“Fuck, you’re so damn wet,” Harley positively mewls, sounding about as together as Pamela feels.

Then Harley sinks into her, just a single finger slow and to the last knuckle. She stops there, sheathed in Pamela, as if to savour it. A slow smile grows across Harley’s face and she drops close for a tender kiss, ending it with a suggestive flick of her tongue.

“I got ya.”

Harley gives Pamela a couple of leisurely, aching strokes before her thumb finds her clit again, circling insistently.

It’s so much, too much, and it's taking Pamela longer than it should, trapped between self-consciousness and giving in. Her muted cries are edging into frustration, and Harley hears it, fingers pausing for the briefest moment before resuming their torturous motion.

“Whatsa matter?”

“I can’t—I want to—” Pamela presses harder into Harley, if possible, unable to catch her breath. “Goddamn it.”

"Get outta ya head," Harley commands, halfway between a growl and a whisper. "Just feel how good an' deep I'm fuckin' you. Gonna fuck you. I've been thinkin' so damn long 'bout being inside ya. Takin' you so fuckin' hard you can't breathe, filling you up til' you got room for nothin' else, then gentle like you've done ta me an' makin' you wait to come until you're beggin' me over and over..."

Harley caps off her graphic fantasy with a moan and Pamela comes explosively. Her back arches trim as a bow as she cuts a sharp cry into the air, a burst of fresh arousal flooding between her legs, in such excess she briefly wonders how Harley can feel what she’s doing.

She comes down panting, with an armful of ecstatic Harley.

"Ya did it!"

"Sweet jesus, peanut, are you trying to kill me?"

"You can't die yet," Harley pouts, draping her leg across Pamela's hip. "Didn't I just tell ya why not?"

"That you did," Pamela acquiesces, gathering Harley close and shuffling them away from the wet spot on the bed.

Complete exhaustion claims her quickly. But naturally a light sleeper, the slightest jolt alerts Pamela into wakefulness.

Beside her, Harley shoots up, eyes wide and round, her pants rasping into the darkness. She grasps out searchingly, hands landing on Pamela and pulling at her.

"I woulda left him. Woulda left him if they didn’t take him fer hurtin’ me. Wouldn't I?”

"Sweetie, all that matters is you're safe now.”

Pamela lays Harley back down onto the bed, tucking the sheets up to her chin. She rubs circles on Harley’s chest until she calms. But the words have escaped into the room and do not return to where they lived before. They tumble and echo all night, impervious to laws of physics or rational debate.

\--

The sound of running steps diverts Pamela from the laundry. She finishes folding one of Harley’s baseball tees, ear cocked to the racket upstairs.

In the south wing, a door to one of Pamela’s unused rooms has been thrown open, and inside, Harley holds a broom the wrong way up.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorry. I thought I heard something. That sounds stupid.”

“It’s not stupid. The dryer vent exits out the roof above this room. Sometimes the backdraft damper can rattle. Good ear, actually.” Pamela pauses. “But what were you going to do, sweep our intruder to death?”

“Ya dunno what I’m capable of,” Harley grouses, leaning the broom against the wall. “What room is this, anyway?”

“You’ve found my mother’s sewing room.”

“It’s all dusty on this side the house.” Harley plucks at a white sheet draped over a low-back chair. “Just a buncha weird chairs and frilly things.”

“Sounds like my mother.”

Harley hunches over guiltily. “Sorry if I’m not supposed ta be in here.”

“I don’t mind if you want to poke around the house,” Pamela tells her, stepping close to run a hand down her back. “There’s nothing here that I’m particularly attached to.”

“Except yer babies.”

“Except my plants, yes. And you, so don’t go jumping off any furniture or for God’s sake, sliding down banisters.”

Caught, Harley doubles down smilingly. “Maybe ya could build a slide down the middle? If there’s ever a fire, not that there’s ever gonna be one, we could get out real fast.”

“I don’t think it’ll match the décor.”

“What if we put a climbin’ wall in the livin’ room—”

Pamela exits the room with Harley hanging off her like a home renovation lamprey.

\--

In snowbound stillness of the house, someone’s moving. Pamela pats the bed next to her muzzily. It’s gone cold. It prompts Pamela out of the warmth and safety of her bed, reaching for her robe. But she’s in Harley’s room tonight, and nothing is as it should be.

The muffled whiteness blanketing the house is backdrop to the disturbance in the den, merely steps away. Harley’s there. There’s something deranged about her movements. Pamela watches at the doorway, mesmerized.

Harley’s glopping on white paint, then green, then red, then purple, in such quantities and in such a frenzy that it’s dripping off the canvas and splashing onto the walls behind the easel. Then she dips a paintbrush in black and wipes it all out. She starts again, the paint mixing and running together onto the easel, onto her feet.

“Harley? What are you doing?”

“I’m buryin’ him. He’s not comin’ back. Never comin’ back.”

Harley continues muttering to herself, a fresh shower of black washing wet off the edge of the canvas onto the wall behind. Her movements are jerky, volatile, as if she’s not quite in control. She doesn’t acknowledge Pamela, nor does she make any indication she notices her presence.

Pamela stares some more, then quietly settles into paint-splattered, but dry armchair in the corner of the room.

It’s still dark when she snaps out of the doze she doesn’t remember surrendering to, and quieter than it was. She leans forward, about to leap out of the chair until she sees Harley curled up on the floor in front of the easel, paintbrush still curled loosely in her fingers.

The painting is a dark, yawning hole in the universe. Pamela shudders to look at it. She bends over Harley and scoops an arm under her knees. Harley wakes up just enough to sleepily fuss and not be dead weight, enough for Pamela to carefully pick her up and carry her back into the bedroom, navigating by memory and moonlight.

Harley’s still sticky with paint, and now Pamela’s sticky with paint. But it’s not what’s important now. Pamela bundles Harley back under the covers, and slides in behind her, front to back.

Smashing in the morning. Bright white daylight through Harley’s bedroom windows. Alarmed, Pamela surges from the bed in disarray, running before she narrows the noise down to Harley’s studio.

“Harley—Harley!”

There’s nothing she can do but wait Harley out, until she’s spent her fury. The object of Harley’s midnight obsession splinters apart in her hands and on the floor. She rips and tears into the shreds of the shreds. Dried paint chips rain down around her as fine dust. It’s not so much destruction as it is devastation.

Finally, there is nothing left to break. The otherworldly force that is Harley has been pacified, and Pamela’s ready for the aftermath.

“Honey, your hands.”

Harley comes with Pamela to the bathroom sink with childlike obedience. She lets Pamela pick the splinters out with a pair of tweezers, clean her cuts and punctures and bandage her wounds. She’s limp as Pamela situates her in bed, staring blankly at her spread hands.

“I’m sorry. I’m not so good at—what’d Doc call it—emotional regulation,” she says when Pamela climbs in next to her. “An’ he said I miss cues folks give out sometimes, so I'm gonna hafta learn ta ‘pologize lots.” Harley shifts uncomfortably, angled slightly away from Pamela.

“That’s not the issue,” Pamela tells her softly. “I just want you tell me what’s going on with you, sweetie. What you’re feeling, even when all you’re feeling is _too much_.”

“But you ain’t got nothin’ do to with these ugly feelin’s I got.”

“Yes, I do. I want to help. Just like you help me when I don’t want to be touched sometimes.”

“Not touchin’ ya’s not really helpin’.” Harley crosses her arms stubbornly.

“It is.”

“Is not.”

Pamela rubs her eyebrow exasperatedly.

“I’m sorry,” Harley says again.

“Do you want a cuddle?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on.” Pamela runs a thumb over Harley’s cheekbone, then her full lips, hand coming down around the back of her neck to pull her close against her.

They stay on their sides with Harley nestled safely into the hollows of her body. Pamela isn’t sure who falls asleep first. But in time, they both do.

\--

They take their first drive together into town once the snow’s cleared. Harley sticks her head a little too far out the window, such a picture of joy that Pamela can’t bring herself to chastise her, rather choosing to take up more road than customary.

“I wanna do that,” Harley says, pointing at a pair of kayakers out on the protected strait.

“You haven’t been kayaking?”

“Nah,” Harley says, still rubbernecking at the couple.

Pamela nods to herself. “Right, Gotham water isn’t so suitable for water sports.”

“I fell off a boat inta the harbor once. I didn’t feel so good fer a coupla days.”

“Toxic sludge will do that to you.”

“Speakin’ of that,” Harley continues sweetly, “where in town can I get coffee with chocolate an’ sugar syrup an’ full-fat real milk?”

Pamela smirks with her eyes front and centre. “I know a place.”

She heads for the café on the outskirts of town. It’s the sort of mismatched modern space hosting poetry slams and book clubs. Behind the counter, a fashionable woman with a bleached silver bob and straight-cut bangs looks up from the espresso machine.

“Hey Pam.”

“Mag.” Pamela nods.

“Who’s your friend?”

Harley answers for herself, in a lower register than Pamela’s used to hearing. “Harley.”

“She bought up close by,” Pamela explains.

“Didn’t know there was a close by,” says Mag. “How’s Pam for a neighbour?”

“Pfft,” Harley blows out noisily with a shine to her eye. “Kinda crappy.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Mag smirks at Pamela. “I’ll take your orders now, if you’re ready.”

“I’ll have a small matcha latte with oat milk, please,” Pamela says. She nudges Harley.

Harley starts, mind clearly elsewhere. “Right. A large mocha. Extra mocha drizzle.”

“On it. Say, Pam, how’d visitor day go this year? Sorry to miss it. I had a family wedding out of town—not worth it at all.”

“Swimmingly. I had someone on staff this year not afraid to be a bit more assertive keeping children off my marigolds.”

“That’s an upgrade.”

“I see you’ve made a few as well.” Pamela eyeballs the new equipment behind the bar.

“Yeah, we’ve gotten busier. The book club’s a party every time.”

“Congratulations.”

“Yep. Towering achievement,” Mag drawls, placing their finished drinks onto the counter. “Good to meet you, and good to see you again.”

Harley absconds with her drink, but Mag stops Pamela, hand covering hers.

“Maybe swing by later if you’re free,” she adds offhand, with more than a little suggestion.

Pamela smiles civilly but abstains from responding, taking her drink to the coffee condiment station. There, Harley seems a little less interested in putting a lid on her cup and more interested in glowering in Mag’s direction.

Pamela decides to broach the topic. “I’ve been living outside of town for years. It’s not exactly a dating hotspot, but we’ve had a few run-ins.”

“Ya fucked,” Harley summarizes.

“Yes,” Pamela confirms delicately, studying Harley’s suddenly unsmiling face.

“Iunno ‘bout you, but I don’t like ta share.”

“I’m the same way.”

“Aight then.” Harley heads for the door with the skip back in her step. “What’s next?”

Next is the farmer’s market, where Pamela loses Harley to the food trucks. She drifts from stall to stall, exchanging pleasantries with familiar faces and taking her time. Eventually, Harley reappears with several bunches of the rainbow carrots and a new addition to her dietary intake.

“What’s this?” Harley queries, holding up the cruciferous vegetable in her other hand.

“Romanesco broccoli. Did you know the florets form natural fractals?”

“Let’s eat nerdy schmancy broccoli,” Harley says, dropping it into their bags.

They visit the supermarket so Pamela can continue restocking her freezer. She catches Harley gawking at the snack aisles as they pass.

“I’m not going to be mad if you want to keep some of the things you like to eat in the house.”

“Even if it’s steaks?”

Pamela winces. “I’d prefer that you buy grass-fed and local, but—” Pamela wrings her hands and takes a mental step back. “I have no authority over your eating habits.”

“Y’know, I only miss meat sometimes. You just cook so fancy.”

“That’s nice of you to say.”

“But if ya ever want a bomb grilled cheese, I’m ya girl.”

In the end, Harley adds a small block of cheese and enough candy to furnish a child’s birthday party to the cart.

Their last stop is the post office, where there is a shipment of art supplies for Harley waiting.

Pamela had, after copious research and phone calls to suppliers, procured professional artist’s paints, handmade long handle brushes, and a heavyweight ceramic palette.

She’s surprised to find herself nervous, slow to follow after Harley unloading the box of art going to Star City and scampering up the ramp into the building.

When she steps up behind Harley, who’s paying for postage, she mentions it.

“I ordered something.”

“Ya did?” Harley asks, balling up her receipt.

“Pick-up for Pamela Isley.” She slides her driver’s licence across the counter.

“What’d ya get?”

“It’s for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Harley bounces to her tiptoes. “Somethin’ fun?

“I think so.”

“What kinda fun?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Pamela laughs, signing for the package.

She takes it to a free counter, using her car key to rip open the taped seams. Stepping back to let Harley take the final step of opening the flaps to reveal the contents, she curls her hands apprehensively together.

“Oh,” Harley whispers reverently, before clapping giddily.

“Good fuckin’ paints!”

“These are so pretty!”

“An’ I don’t have one of those!”

She takes the items out of the box and returns them one by one. Then she whirls on Pamela, looking almost angry. She takes Pamela by the back of a neck and kisses her possessively, with more tongue than Pamela would strictly use in public. Then she steps back and hefts the box.

“Let’s go home.”

\--

"Red! I gotta show ya somethin'!"

Harley pads into Pamela’s office area, jangling her car keys. She leans over Pamela to peer at the spreadsheets on her screen.

“What’re ya doin’ anyway?”

“Working on the spring budget,” says Pamela, clearing her calculator. “What are you showing me?

“Betty’ll take us there.”

“I have to harvest the last of the kale after this. Can it wait a couple hours?”

“But it’ll be dark out by then!”

“I’m sorry, but I don't have days off. My plants don't take days off."

"But you pay people to do shit for ya.”

"I can do it better and faster.”

"Didn't ya say they all went ta school an' everythin'?"

"Yes, they are all very competent.”

"Do ya need convincin' or somethin'? I think you need convincin'.”

With a few long strides forward, Harley pulls Pamela by the office chair in for a kiss. She runs her tongue along Pamela’s top lip, then along the bottom, thumb pressingly lightly on the bruise she’d left that morning in the crook of Pamela’s neck.

It’s a brazen move, but it has the intended effect.

Pamela’s instantly relieving their morning, partially spent behind Harley in the mirror, watching her own hands greedily roaming the expanse of supple skin. Recalling every stuttered rise and fall of Harley’s chest with her nipples caught firm between thumb and forefinger, her expressions as Pamela’s hand worked between her legs. The way Harley had tossed her head back onto Pamela’s shoulder and dug her nails into the side of her leg. And how Harley had nearly bent her double over the bathroom counter after, how’d she’d be in a similar position now if not for the sturdy back of her chair.

Harley’s flashing back on the same moment, going by the wicked grin on her face as she sits back onto her heels, working the closure of Pamela’s slacks.

Uncomfortable with the sudden change of position and the implied power dynamic, Pamela covers Harley’s hands with her own.

“Harley. This isn’t a transaction. You never have to use sex to get something or have it when you don’t want to.”

“It ain’t a trade. I wanna, but if you don’t wanna, ya just say the word.” Harley bites her lip, thumbs massaging the insides of Pamela’s thighs.

Conflicted but defenseless, Pamela lets out a shaky breath and removes her hands, signaling her consent.

“Is that a yeah?”

“Yes,” Pamela repeats, watching Harley finish removing her slacks.

Humming appreciatively, Harley strokes over the delicate embroidery on her panties and nips at the waistband with her teeth before easing them off.

“I’m right here. Just watch me do ya,” Harley purrs, maintaining eye contact as she lowers her mouth to the apex of Pamela’s thighs, dipping her tongue in exploratively. She pauses to suck her lower lip into her mouth. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted ta do this.”

The armrests creak under Pamela’s grip.

Grounding Pamela with her hands on her thighs, steadily keeping them apart, Harley leans back down. Her cheeks hollow with a positively diabolical glint in her eyes. She judiciously alternates using the tip and the flat of her tongue, smiling into it, obviously enjoying the wet, lewd sounds she’s making.

It’s hard to stay looking at Harley, but Pamela does, until she has no choice but to give into the overwhelming responses of her own body. The image of Harley looking up from between her legs at her burns into the backs of her eyelids as she comes. An image for her to relieve at later times, but a pleasure unrepeatable by her own means.

Harley rises, kissing Pamela pointedly before taking the bottom of Pamela’s cashmere sweater and wiping her own face. Then she sits down on the side of the desk and reaches for the glass of water on the coaster, idly tracing the flush visible above the neck of her shirt.

Pamela picks up a pen.

“What are ya doin’ now?”

“Writing instructions for my staff.”

Riding with Harley isn't particularly relaxing. She has a penchant for loud rap music and a lead foot. They get safely to their destination nevertheless: an unmarked gravel road that terminates at the foot of a treed incline.

Harley leads the way up a hill to a rail trestle. Beneath them, a long way down, rapids fill the gorge with sounds of churning water. There’s a refuge platform jutting out the middle equidistant from each end of the bridge. The rail ties are just far enough apart for Pamela to have to guess whether she’d fall straight through or end up in supreme discomfort.

"Live a lil', Red,” Harley goads, stepping onto the track and pirouetting. “I’ve got somethin’ ta show ya on the platform.”

“Living being the operative word.”

Harley blithely bounces from plank to plank in front of her, arms held out for balance. Pamela inches forward, a plank at a time. There’s a dizzying rush of fear, then adrenaline takes over.

“Ain’t it beautiful?”

“I can’t look up until I’m on solid ground, but I’m sure,” Pamela says.

She focuses on every next step, studiously avoiding looking down through the gaps. She looks up only once she has a solid grip on the platform barricade, and Harley’s arm winds around her.

It is beautiful: the ravine bending into the mountains, the white water melding into green, then into blue. A fragile but mighty slice of nature that thousands of tons of near unstoppable speeding steel cannot cross without help.

Pamela lingers, breathing and alive and _here_.

“Look what I made!” Harley indicates a fresh heart with ‘P+H’ inscribed inside alongside other overlapping doodles on the railing. She’s painted it red, with multicolour rays emitting from it.

There are other, simpler hearts there, some drawn over multiple times, some in multiples. People and their need for permanency. Pamela can forgive graffiti on man-made edifices. Edifices which are, in their own way, a defacement of the larger natural domain.

“We have a unique set of initials,” Pamela notes.

“’Cause nobody’s like us.”

“There are a lot of people in the world.”

“Screw them.” Harley offers her forearm for Pamela to grip. “Hold onta me for balance.”

“Are you sure you want me to take you with me if I fall?”

“I won’t let ya fall, dork,” Harley promises with an eye roll. She resists running ahead this time, patiently and assuredly keeping their balance.

\--

Spring again, cooler than the last.

Pamela gets off the phone and looks out front, then out back for Harley. She finds her spread out under the weeping willow with a comic book.

The book has been propped up with a can of beer and a bag of pretzels, but Harley’s fallen asleep on her side with her head pillowed on one arm and the other hand nestled under her chin.

The affection—no, adoration that lances through Pamela is as welcome as it is terrifying, something she’ll have to accustom herself to.

She lowers herself to the shaded island of lawn next to Harley and takes her in for a long moment before tickling her nose with a blade of grass.

Harley sits up violently with a garbled snort. “Red! Ya turd. I was dreamin’ ‘bout an egg sandwich,” she complains, rubbing her nose.

“Sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”

“Ya better.”

“I was wondering about something.”

“Yeah, shoot,” Harley accedes breezily, wrinkling her nose at her warm beer.

"How'd you find Primrose Cottage in the first place?”

"Oh.” Harley smacks her lips. “Well, like this. In Gotham, Mistah J kept writin' me letters. I'm not supposed ta read 'em. One day I just felt like skedaddlin'. Betty n' me an' all my stuff, we just kept drivin' an' didn't stop.”

“How long did you do that?” Pamela asks gently.

“Iunno. A while. We drove inta town for gas. Guess I was tired. I walked inta the place with all the pictures of houses in the window. Told 'em I'd take one."

"You didn't stay at the bed and breakfast?"

"Like I said, I ain't a planner. The guy was real nice ta me an' it was cheaper than the other houses.”

"I wonder why that would be."

Harley purses her lips playfully. “Hey, ya zip it ‘bout Rosie. She’s done me good.”

Paula quirks a brow at another demonstration of Harley’s tendency to anthropomorphize the objects around her. Just add it to the list of oddball qualities she’s helplessly charmed by.

But another thought occurs to Pamela, poisoning her mood. "Would you ever feel like leaving this place?”

"Ain't got a reason ta.”

"You don't get bored here?"

"Nah. I can’t stir as much shit, that’s fer sure. An’ it’s pretty here. I can do whatever the fuck I want, paint n' swim naked n' you.”

Harley drifts off, momentarily distracted by Pamela’s chest. “Yeah, so.” She flops back onto the grass. “Anythin’ else?”

"We’re just an odd cosmic coincidence, aren’t we? Nothing deliberate was done on your part. If I were spiritual in any way, I’d think it was meant to be.”

“I think things jus’ find the right places ta be,” Harley says casually. “Maybe that’s why I’m here all the time.”

“Fair enough,” Pamela cedes the point, thoughtful.

\--

Pamela’s in front of the fireplace with a scientific journal when Harley rolls in with shoulders dampened from the ongoing drizzle outside. She sets down two mugs, one with Pamela’s much-loved tisane, the other Harley’s highly favoured hot chocolate.

“Thank you,” Pamela says, pleasantly surprised.

“Ya look so cozy an’ cute. I could die.”

“Please don’t. Join me.” Pamela lifts the excess blanket next to her.

Harley snugs up into the space readily, contentedly leaning up against Pamela. She tilts the text in Pamela’s hand to face her, then back just as quickly. She opts for the remote instead, beginning her strange, lengthy ritual of picking something to watch.

“You’re getting domestic on me,” notes Pamela, unable to keep the affectionate smile off her face.

“I like ta cuddle.” Harley brushes the wrinkles out of the throw. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.”

"Not at all. Something to be cultivated, I think.”

Somehow, it was the wrong thing to say. Harley springs to her feet, whirling around.

“I’m not one of your goddamn plants! I’m a person! I’ave feelings!”

The outburst stuns Pamela. She cringes, unclear on where it all went wrong. But she’s completely at sea, unable to find a safe verbal landing.

“I agree on all points. It was only a turn of phrase. I only meant that I care about you.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“What?” erupts from Harley, as if it had been breaking news.

“Harley. What we’ve been doing, I thought—” Pamela trails off, unable to explicate her vulnerability.

“I need ta, I need ta think.”

Pamela lets her go. She sits a little too long before dousing the fire. She’s the type to stew, for years if left to her own devices, picking apart every emotion, scrutinizing every stray thought. A slow burn. And yet.

Past phantoms notwithstanding, the Harley she knows is confrontational, preferring to quarrel face to face, to take arguments to their natural conclusions and thread loose ends back into the tapestry.

With that knowledge, Pamela heads to her workshop. There’s something familiar there: work. She throws herself into it. The lights stay on late into the night, a signal fire against the darkness. It attracts Harley sometime after midnight.

“I don’t get it,” she says, sidling up to the workstation where Pamela’s cataloguing soil samples.

“Where do you need clarification?”

“What I had with Mistah J, he told me that’s love. So this ain’t love. Or that wasn’t love.”

“All I can tell you is that this is it for me.” Pamela watches with detached interest as her hand trembles around a test tube. “I love you. That’s my truth.”

“But anybody can run their mouth ‘bout love. How am I supposed ta know what’s the truth?” The utter confusion in Harley’s voice burns a hole through her.

“I can’t tell you what your truth is, sweet pea,” Pamela says gently. She quickly replaces the tube into the rack when she finds that her hand is up to task.

“I like it when ya call me that.”

“Sweet pea? Well, you are. Very sweet, rather edible, and something of a staple.”

“An’ green, n’ round, n’ lives in a pod,” Harley continues, clearly happier in more familiar, lighthearted territory.

Pamela would gladly join her there, but there are matters yet to address.

“Look, this doesn’t need to be some big upset,” Pamela decides, finally dropping all pretense of working. “I’m not going to cavil at your word choice. I just need you to know what I’m really saying is that you’re terribly important to me. I care about your happiness and wellbeing, and I want to be close to you often and for the foreseeable future. Maybe even build something of a home together and travel occasionally if that’s something that interests you. And I hope you feel the same way.”

“Yeah, yeah, all that,” Harley says glibly. For the next part she meets Pamela’s gaze unblinkingly. “Mostly I just wanna be with ya.”

“If that’s how you feel but love isn’t the right word for you to encompass all that, then I couldn’t give less of a damn.”

Harley’s face blooms into her trademark grin. “Are ya gonna stop playin’ with dirt an’ come ta bed now?”

“Are you going to be in it?”

“Fuck yeah,” Harley says, hurrying Pamela along by the hand once again.

\--

“It’s been a year since we met.”

“Oh yeah?”

Harley’s bare feet are kicked up on the kitchen table. Pamela swats them off with the stack of documents in her hand before laying the packet down for Harley’s consideration.

“Are you ready to sell before the unwashed masses descend upon my garden once more and ask why in the world that atrocity of a house is still there?”

“But where would I put my stuff?”

“Where do you already keep half of your belongings?”

“Oh.” Harley frowns mightily for some seconds. “But can I have a room that’s mine?”

“You may make use of the half of this house I don’t use to call yours. Some of which you’ve already claimed, at any rate.”

Harley leans back in the chair, narrowing her eyes at Pamela. “I guess ya got this all figured out already without me.”

“On the contrary. I’m fairly certain this series of events has solely been your doing.”

“Don’t be all fussy,” Harley teases. The conversation dissolves into giggles when Harley begins spider-walking a hand up Pamela’s thigh and under the hem of shirt.

“So,” Harley says, after Pamela mounts a successful defense and her hands are being kept to herself again. “I buy a shitty house an’ end up with a castle an’ a girlfriend. I’m badass.”

Pamela’s eyebrow inches up, but a tenderness flares anew in her chest. A lot of things, it seems, have happened without being put into words.

“So you admit the house is substandard?” she asks leadingly instead.

“I said Rosie’s _shitty_ ,” Harley enunciates. “Not that there’s anythin’ wrong with her.” She bats Pamela on the shoulder like she’s won something. “Gimme the pen.”

Harley flicks to the last page and signs roughshod near the dotted line. Then, shooting a dirty look at Pamela, she flips back through to the front.

“An’ how much are ya givin’ me?”

“Market price,” Pamela says, before Harley can find the number.

“Ya stingy asshole.” Harley throws the pen down and pounces.

Pamela flips them before they hit the floor. She’s stronger by a whit but Harley has ample flexibility. She successfully pins Harley’s wrists, but Harley does a bizarre squirmy movement with her hips and legs. It gets her halfway out from under Pamela, bent like a pretzel.

“How’re you doing that,” Pamela grumbles, feeling her position weakening. “No cheating.”

“Are you sayin’ somethin’ about my natural abilities?”

A flick of her hips, and Harley upsets the equilibrium, sweeping Pamela onto her back. Pamela’s knee accidentally nudges Harley between the legs. Harley’s corresponding yelp of surprise turns into a hum of interest. The smile drops from her face.

And Harley’s off-the-shoulder number has rucked almost all the way up, anyway. To Pamela’s great preoccupation, all she’s wearing underneath is a lacy little bralette. It’s scant enough Pamela can roll Harley’s nipples into stiff peaks underneath, even feel them for herself with her tongue.

All the while Harley has a bordering on painful grip on her hair, releasing it only to find a grip on Pamela with which to roll their hips together.

They're basically humping with clothes on. It’s embarrassing, but Pamela's irretrievably lost.

Pamela eventually accomplishes unbuttoning Harley’s impossibly tiny shorts and squeezes her hand in. There’s no room to manoeuvre trapped between Harley and the denim, but Pamela manages a harsh rhythm with the heel of her hand. Harley’s already most of the way there, and has no compunctions about announcing her climax with a loud series of moans.

The pressure of Harley's thigh is enough for Pamela to grind herself into oblivion, coming shortly after Harley with a choked sob. And she's soaked straight through her linen pants onto Harley's bare thigh, if Harley's self-satisfied smirk is any indication.

"Don't get a big head, you were right there with me like a horny teenager."

Harley's smile drops slightly. She pulls Pamela’s hand out of her shorts by the wrist and kisses her damp fingertips.

"Goddammit Red, ya make me near ‘bout lose my mind."

"Clearly, it's mutual," Pamela says, standing and sagging her trousers slightly to unstick the wet crotch from herself. "I need to change."

Harley dances up the stairs behind her, already wriggling out of her shorts, and Pamela has to block the doorway to the walk-in closet with a hand on the doorframe.

"No. You can wait your turn because I have to plant the spring flowers today and I need all the daylight hours I can get.”

Harley pouts, but a coffee and a breakfast a later, when Pamela looks in on her before heading out into the sun, she’s prancing about her studio lost to world.

\--

In this load, Harley’s included her TV set. It’s an old thing, a cumbersome tube-type with a noticeably grainy picture. Pamela watches her cruise around to the front driveway with it in the back of her truck, windows rolled down and arm held out to catch the breeze.

“You know I have a very modern, very large flat screen,” she remarks from the window in the front parlour where she’s answering emails.

“I know. But I like this one. I’m gonna put it in my game room.”

Harley hops down from the truck, bare shoulders and thighs already pinking. She’s in a delightfully short romper this morning, in gauzy red and white material.

“That’s nice,” Pamela comments absentmindedly. She keeps an eye on Harley, unloading the truck for the second time in an hour, muttering to herself as she inventories items she more than likely tossed into the truck bed without prior review.

Pamela sits up in sudden remembrance. She snatches up the bottle of sunblock she’d set aside earlier, launching it out the window at a well-formed behind. She doesn’t aim to make contact. “Heads up.” It ricochets off a tire and lands by Harley’s feet.

“Hey!”

“Protection,” Pamela says. “Use it.”

“Ha ha, you’re not funny.” Harley bends to pick up the bottle, looking at Pamela over her shoulder. “Are ya gonna help me put this on or not?”

“Depends, how much junk do you have?”

“I’m recyclin’,” Harley protests. “Not that you havin’ a million bins helps.”

“Just set it aside if you’re not sure which one it goes in. I’ll take a look later.”

“’Kay.”

Harley sets aside a large pink plastic funnel. The bottle of sunblock is still lying in the bed of the truck, alongside a few of Pamela’s mugs.

Pamela sighs and gets to her feet, closing the lid of her laptop.

\--

It’s one of Pamela’s favourite scenes: sitting on the veranda with the kitchen doors flung wide open and the sun breaking over a cloud of daybreak mist, a steaming cup of coffee in hand. But better than that, even, is the glorious smell of summer morning in the country, dewy, fresh, and brightly green. If there’s a place for Pamela in the world, she thinks this may well be it.

The peace is only broken by the crackle of her speakerphone as her call connects.

“Hey Pam.”

"Zatanna?"

"Yeah?" Zatanna drags out the word, clearly already enjoying herself.

"You're going to shut up and let me finish what I'm about to say.”

"Uh huh."

"I'm sending you the signed contract for Primrose Cottage. The one at market price. I want you to fast track it, pull the permits, and have the crew on site first thing next week, ready to level that thing.”

"You know I can't accept the forged signatures of dead people."

"She is alive and well and prepared to not only sign any documents you require, but will be available by phone for any additional questions.”

"She?"

"Nobody you know."

"Did you make a friend?"

"Yes, in fact, which accounts for why I need her house demolished as soon as possible so we can formally shack up together.”

"Okay, chill out, none of my business. And hold up for second. That house is old. The inspector’s going to have to come out and check for asbestos, lead paint, all that fun stuff first.”

“Did you get all that or not?”

“Yes, mistress. Lord almighty. I’ll text you—or uh, email, depending on length—updates in a bit. Sit tight and park the u-haul.”

Rolling her eyes, Pamela hangs up rather than deigning to answer.

“Who’s callin’ ya _mistress_?” Heralded by rapidly approaching footfalls, Harley says the word with relish.

“Nobody. My real estate agent. She’s difficult.”

Just like that, Pamela’s in a possession of a lapful of sleepy and summer-sunshine-smelling Harley.

Slurping Pamela’s coffee, Harley leans startingly close to her face. “Kinda sounded like you’re the difficult one, but what do I know.”

“I’m not difficult. I’m simply able to voice my very precise needs.”

Harley snickers right into Pamela’s ear and has the audacity to include a nibble to her earlobe. “You don’t seem that hard ta please to me.”

She stands up with Harley clinging to her like a koala, whooping as Pamela makes for deeper garden.

“If you dump me in the thorn place ya got somethin’ else comin’!”

Pamela has something else in mind.

\--

Pamela thinks of the early days in the old house, when she hurt so badly she'd lost all sense of time and place. There was nothing beyond her family's land and the second of the minute of the hour. It had been quiet in her mind. She'd watched herself from afar as she went through the motions, did the work of restoration and renovation.

Everything came back, eventually. The past, the future. Thoughts and emotions and memories. All the parts of herself that had been violated that still made her who she was. Salvage she found a little more of day by day.

There's something of her, now. Something angry, something hopeful. Something enough to want, but also give.

The contractors are already on site, demolition crew milling around a dump truck and excavator. Next to her, Harley looks out over her—now Pamela's—property and sighs. As they watch, a roofing shingle tumbles down and off the side of the house with a clatter.

“Ya sure I can’t keep, like, a room, or a wall, or somethin’?”

“We’re keeping the rhododendrons.”

“Poor Rosie. She’s the first house that’s been all mine.” Harley hugs herself dolefully.

“Well,” Pamela offers, unable to withhold the surprise, “I thought I’d have them build a little deck by the lake for you after, reusing what they can. Enough for a lounge chair or two. So it’ll still be yours in some form.”

Harley peers up at Pamela, squints, and kisses her hard on the mouth.

“Love that,” she says, linking her fingers through Pamela’s.

They play the part of silent observers for awhile, then Harley drops Pamela’s hand. Her eyes are bright, grin growing wider by the second. And, Pamela notices belatedly, it’s tinged with mischief as she turns away to jog towards trouble, hand raised above her head in a wave at the operator climbing into the excavator.

"Hey mistah! Mistah! Can I have a spin?”


End file.
